


Exceptions

by pepper_writes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Dysphoria, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluid Sexuality, Friends to Lovers, Hunk and Pidge and Lance are Bi Buds, M/M, Mind melds, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Time Skips, aceflux Pidge, canon compliant...as much as possible, neurodivergent!Pidge, the hidge dynamic is totally platonic until they're both at least 18 jsyk, warnings will be posted by chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 21:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 132,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8549827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepper_writes/pseuds/pepper_writes
Summary: Pidge left Earth for answers, and ends up with a lot more than she bargained for.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> There are next to no Hidge-centric fics. Let's change that.
> 
> NOTES: This work is currently rated T, and will eventually incorporate a second part that will be rated M for mature themes that come into play once all involved characters are 18+ years of age. Please use your own discretion and consume content responsibly. 
> 
> Also, there are a lot of other sensitive topics in this work. Please check the tags for triggers.

Pidge didn’t _do_ feelings.

 

She wasn’t _opposed_ to them: she didn’t gag any more or less than Matt did when her parents exchanged corny love letters on Valentine’s Day, nor did she grimace and wrinkle her nose every time she witnessed Keith and Lance traipsing down the halls of the castle hand in hand. Kisses, touches—hell, even sex—were all fine with her so long as she didn’t have to partake in any of it.

 

It wasn’t as if she misunderstood the concept of _love,_ eithe _r_ : Pidge knew her family loved her, and that she loved them. She loved the impromptu family she’d somehow become a part of in the past few years aboard the Castle of Lions, and had even come to terms with the fact that that familial love had extended to encompass the Green Lion as well. It was easy; comfortable: inhabiting the corners of the void that had been left in her heart when her brother and her father had been swallowed by the vastness of space; a mild balm to the burning ache that throbbed in the pit of her stomach whenever she looked into a mirror and saw Matt.

 

No, Pidge was fine with _love_ , despite how her sensitivity to it had pained her so: it was an advantage disguised as a flaw (or, perhaps, a flaw disguised as an advantage) written into her DNA, shaped by the daft reasoning of biology; a part of her ‘programming’ that had kept her lineage alive since the dawn of life on Earth itself. See, _love_ as she knew it was an inevitable byproduct of her species, but _feelings_ …?

 

Nope. Nada. Not worth the trouble, never even tempted.

 

Well, until now.


	2. Year 1 (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some misgendering is mentioned. Take care!

\- - - - - - -

 

 

She supposes it started back at the Garrison.

 

Back then he had been a head taller than her and somewhere between twice and thrice as wide, all rounded corners and soft smiles. Pidge remembered thinking her stroke of luck in selecting a pseudonym in such close alphabetic proximity to ‘Garrett’ rather ironic given her track record of misfortune as of late, but welcomed his gestures of warmth and kindness without question or complaint.

 

Hunk had been in almost all of her classes, and had resided fewer than half a dozen doors down from her in the dormitories. He’d always remembered to write down the assignments and page numbers in his planner, and was never mad when she knocked on his door at two in the morning to ask about the homework. Plus, he had snacks, and was always willing to share them.

 

Of course, she’d temporarily rescinded her belief in a lucky steak when, after a month or two of casual acquaintanceship, Hunk had introduced her to Lance. The two of them had clashed at first, but their mediator always managed to quell the tension with his reasoning. Pidge supposed the comfort she felt at the sound of his voice softly demanding peace also had something to do with it. Later, after several months in space aboard the Castle of Lions, Lance had told her that he’d felt as much, too.

 

She supposed that was enough to make it true, and thought no more of it after she and the blue paladin had parted their ways for bed.

 

 

\- - - - - - -

 

 

She thinks it might have begun on Arus.

 

Having the Arusians as guests in the castle had, to some degree, served its purpose in sufficiently distracting the others so that she could disembark and complete the task she’d intended to pursue all along. The data from the fallen Galra ship had been meager, albeit sufficient to begin charting a course to find Matt and her dad, and she didn’t want to waste another tick if she could help it.

 

They’d find someone else to pilot Green.

 

When her plans had inevitably crumbled thanks to Sendak and Haxus’ scheming (and, of course, her subsequent counter-scheming), Pidge had found herself in a rather peculiar situation. She thought she might have been going crazy: outside of Hunk and Lance, she’d known the Alteans and the other paladins for maybe a month, and yet, somehow…

 

She _loved_ them. All of them, and in ways that she never fathomed she could love someone outside of her immediate family. She loved them the way she loved Matt: embracing all of their flaws and quirks; unafraid to snort when she laughed or to let her face contort when she cried in front of them. For the first time in over a year she felt like she could be entirely herself again, swollen to bursting with the approval and affections of her peers and family.

 

In the end it had been almost easy to tell them the truth about ‘Pidge:’ Allura, for one, was thrilled at the prospect of having another woman on the team, while Lance’s dramatic reaction to the news had fueled her sniggers and chuckles for the better part of the afternoon.

 

It took them a good few days, but before long she found herself being referred to with the proper pronouns on a consistent basis, and by the end of the month even Lance no longer slipped up.

 

She’d hardly noticed that, though, because between the rest of the paladins and the two Alteans, Hunk was the only one who had never misgendered her.

 

When she asked him about it later, he’d smiled, insisting that he’d known all along.

 

Pidge had blanched. “Since—since the Garrison?”

 

“Remember that time Commander Iverson told you that you threw like a girl during drill practice?”

 

She laughed at the memory. “And I told him that, if he tried hard enough, he might be able to throw like a girl one day, too?”

 

He chuckled, offering her a warm smile. “That’s when I knew.”

 

 

\- - - - - - -


	3. Year 1 (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cramps are banished and the green and yellow paladins stage a prank.

\- - - - - - -

 

 

She supposes that it might have started when she ran out of asprin.

 

They’d been floating about in space for the better part of three months now, and the meager supply Pidge always carried in a tiny pill pouch stuffed into her sock for emergencies had finally run out. She’d intended to bring her last sample to Coran in the hopes that they could replicate the substance in one of the castle’s labs, but then they’d all been summoned to do their Voltron business and it had completely slipped her mind.

 

The first cramp had hit her like a bus, the visceral pain swelling and throbbing deep within her abdomen, and she’d had to suppress a gasp at the dinner table as the toe-curling pain crawled its way up her spine. Despite her best efforts to conceal her grimace the other paladins still noticed (though Lance—of _course_ —had dismissed it as an affirmation of their shared disgust at the particularly unappetizing meal Coran had prepared for them this evening): Shiro had excused her early with a sympathetic nod, and she’d gone straight to her quarters to curl into a ball on her bed and scream silently into her kneecaps.

 

The first wave of cramps had just begun to die down when, to her horror, Pidge heard someone shuffle down the hall and stop in front of the door. She had half the nerve to yell at whomever it was coming around to bother her to _leave her alone, dammit,_ but the obvious concern and understanding in Hunk’s soft voice immediately had her at ease.

 

“Pidge, may I come in?”

 

She huffed, muttering an affirmation and unfurling her body from its tight coil just a fraction as the automatic door hissed open. The yellow paladin quietly crossed the threshold, carrying something that looked a little like a glowing beanbag gingerly in his fingers. Pidge eyed the object, raising a brow when her gaze shifted to his face.

 

“Oh, right! I, um—I found these in the infirmary a while back after one of the training drones sprained my wrist,” he said, moving closer to the bed as he offered her the packet.

 

She tentatively took it, gasping in surprise as silky warmth danced and pulsed around her fingers. It was like a liquid blanket; a sentient heat that hummed synchronously with her heartbeat.

 

“…A heating pad?” she asked dumbly, holding it close to her face so that she could scrutinize its contents.

 

“A contained exothermic microbiome,” he elaborated, offering her a soft smile.

 

“A heating pad made of bacteria, then,” Pidge offered wryly, chuckling softly as she pressed it to her stomach. The relief was almost instantaneous, and the majority of the tension that had been stored in her body dissipating with a soft sigh.

 

“Yep: I asked Coran about it, and he said that they’re composed of these symbiotic microorganisms that passively collect ambient energy and then emit heat when exposed to quintessence. Apparently the Alteans have been using them for thousands of years to treat muscle aches and stimulate healing. They’re the best things ever, right?” Hunk beamed, fishing another out of one of his pockets and handing it to her. “There’s like a zillion of them in the infirmary, but these will last you a good long while if you use them frequently enough.”

 

She gladly accepted the second unit and pressed it to her back, shoulders drooping in relief when the throbbing became little more than an irksome hum.

 

“If we risk our lives to defeat Zarkon and all I’m allowed to take back from space is one of these things, it’ll be worth it,” she muttered contentedly, snuggling into her sheets. “ _Frick_ , these things are _incredible_. Thanks a bunch, Hunk: I definitely owe you one.”

 

He smiled, offering her shoulder a glancing pat. “You can do me a solid by feeling the best you can as soon as possible, all right?”

 

Pidge snorted. “I meant like a _favor_ , Hunk.”

 

“I know what you meant,” he chuckled slyly, the beginnings of a conniving grin unfurling from his lips. “Or have you forgotten the little _activity_ we have scheduled for Keith and Lance tomorrow evening before dinner?”

 

“You have the camera?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“The handprint data from the juice boxes?”

 

“Prints are lifted, scanned, and ready to go.”

 

“….Coran’s castle maintenance manual?”

 

He pulled a data pad out of one of his pockets and flashed her the screen. “The Altean to English translation is _juuust_ about…done!”

 

The device chirped in conformation, and a table of contents appeared on the screen.

 

Pidge pushed her glasses up her nose and examined the data, scrolling through with her finger until she came upon the section that detailed the maintenance of the castle’s many automated doors.

 

“Ooooh, perfect,” Pidge snickered, skimming over its contents. “You’re a rockstar, Hunk: thanks for getting this all pulled together.”

 

“It’s no trouble at all. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted in on one of your legendary pranks,” he replied, glancing over her shoulder to take a peek at the data. “Honestly, that stunt you pulled back at the Garrison had Iverson baffled for _days_.”

 

“Are you talking about the time I programmed the simulators to screen Pacman whenever the emergency brakes were used, or the time I hacked into the Garrison’s dining menu and got us chicken nugget day three days in a row?”

 

“That was _you_!?”

 

The green paladin chuckled. “What can I say? Pranks were a great way of distracting the faculty and staff: while everyone was puzzling over the breach, I was able to sneak up on the roof and conduct some scans.”

 

Hunk smiled. “I’d always wondered what you were doing up at all hours of the night,” he mused, reaching over her shoulder to zoom in on a particular component of the automatic door’s design. The keypad area enlarged, revealing a tangled net of wires and panels. “I don’t think you ever knocked on my door asking about the homework outside the hours of one and three AM—hold up, stop scrolling for a sec… it looks like the infared sensor registers one’s presence upon approach and powers on the hand reading pad, but it doesn’t actually scan the user. Kinda like an automatic sliding door or paper towel dispenser: the power-on is a non-specific response…”

 

* * *

 

Switching Keith and Lance’s hand pad data had been relatively easy: a reset and re-scan took less than two minutes for them to complete as a team (even if the prints they’d obtained from the water pouches were less than perfect). It was the surprisingly low-tech accent bars—red for Keith and blue for Lance, of course—around each door’s threshold and hand pad reader that proved to be the biggest problem.

 

In the end Pidge had needed to climb onto Hunk’s shoulders to reach and switch the highest of the accented bars. It had taken them nearly ten minutes, and by the time the green paladin had managed to hop off her teammate’s shoulders he’d amassed a healthy collection of sweat stains.

 

Once they’d switched the last of the details (including the meager personal affects that each of their teammates held in their respective rooms), they re-routed a castle surveillance camera to Pidge’s computer and hid in Hunk’s room, lying in wait for the boys to spring the trap.

 

It didn’t take long: not five minutes later, Lance sauntered down the hallway, inspecting his fingernails on one hand as he automatically pressed the other against the keypad. He only looked up when the door didn’t automatically open, taking a moment to register the error.

 

“¿ _De veras_?” he mumbled, attempting to activate the scanner again, but was rejected a second time.

 

He chanced a look around, only to grunt in confusion when he saw the blue accent bars on the door one threshold further down from him.

 

Much as Pidge had expected, Lance had simply shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to the ‘correct’ door, scanning his palm and uttering something incomprehensible under his breath as the apparatus slid closed behind him. The green and yellow paladins shared a high-five, then set to work locating Keith.

 

He was, naturally, a creature of habit: unless he was too ill to stand, Keith always— _always_ —worked himself to within an inch of his limits in the training deck, and then would be back in his own quarters again to retire for the night not five minutes after ending the training sequence.

 

Pidge smirked, pulling up a live camera feed of the red paladin leaving the deck. “Less than five minutes out,” she remarked, “though, with that limp he’s got, better make that six.”

 

As expected he was drenched in sweat and near shivering with fatigue, and the heaviness of his breath could even be heard through the ceiling-mounted microphone at least ten feet from where he was standing. He’d pulled off his shirt and used it to mop the mess at the back of his neck, bracing himself on the threshold of his room to catch his breath before he allowed the scanner to read his left palm.

 

It slid open.

 

This wasn’t the plan.

 

Hunk paled.

 

“What the—Pidge? Are you—“

 

A colorful stream of curses peppered the tense air as Pidge ripped off her headphones, typing furiously to switch the video feed.

 

“Fuckin’ quiznak: I _totally_ forgot that he’s ambidextrous—“

 

Wait.

 

The clacking on the keyboard stopped, and she and the yellow paladin exchanged a glance as they independently came to the same conclusion.

 

“LANCE, WHAT THE _FUCK_ —“

 

* * *

 

Okay, so things didn’t go _exactly_ according to plan.

 

But, of course, in all of their scheme’s intricacies and nuances, it was expected that they’d forget some of the non-tech, non-engineering things. Hunk and Pidge might have been at the top of their class at the Garrison, but they were still only human, after all.

 

Human enough to forget that Keith had probably registered both his left _and_ his right hand print on the console in front of his room. Human enough that they’d under-estimated the amount of time it would take for the two of them to manually switch the colored accent bars above the blue and red paladins’ doors.

 

Human enough to have had the live feed camera on a motion detection setting so that it pointed straight into “Lance’s” room as Keith had barged in and found Lance freshly showered, brushing his teeth, and sitting on the bed with his bathrobe hanging open.

 

Wide, _wide_ open.

 

The inhuman noise Pidge made as the camera transmitted the scene might not have remained covert had it not been for Lance’s piercing shriek. The green paladin slammed her laptop shut, palms rubbing into her eye sockets, eerily silent as Hunk choked down a laugh.

 

After a few tense seconds of silence between them (the boys, of course, were still yelling at one another outside), she spoke.

 

“You think Coran has something in the infirmary to induce retrograde amnesia?”

 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "¿De veras?": Spanish for "Really/truly?" (kinda more like "Seriously?" here)


	4. Year 2 (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunk and Allura have sleepover-talk. Fluffy Shallura feels ensue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> p> ** _( SEASON 2 SPOILERS AHEAD!)_**
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> _(Some minor edits have been made to fit the Season 2 timeline: specifically, Pidge finding info on her brother at the Beta Traz prison, Keith’s Galra lineage, and Prince Lotor (apparently) being appointed in Zarkon’s place. I’m assuming that Shiro will reappear, but we’ll see how things go ;] )_

Looking back, the pranks seem silly: it’s amusing, almost, to consider the person she is now and how the schemes they’d cooked up to baffle the other three paladins and the two Aleans aboard the Castle of Lions. The ideas seem so simple; so one-dimensional: something that had taken her three days of idle mind-chatter to figure out back then took at most an afternoon by now, but the time had brought familiarity, and the familiarity had invited efficiency. Camaraderie.

 

And, of course, more pranks that verged on being downright diabolical.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

**YEAR II**

 

After the incident on Balmera, the Paladins and Alteans had spent the better part of their time in the months thereafter addressing all of the issues and conflicts that came with the mass migration of alien refugees. Of course, time and Prince Lotor’s recent appointment had only seemed to make the Galra armies more cruel and destructive and, at the rate he was continuing to suck planets dry of their quintessence, there would be no more places to flee between here (here being the third planet in the Hyperion Tetrad) and the next nearest star system by the end of the calendar year.

 

It didn’t take long for the duress and intensity of the paladins’ schedules to take a toll on them: eventually the inevitable happened, and Shiro’s Galra tech arm was severely damaged in a run-on with some alien rogues during a planet-wide evacuation effort. The whole affair had been rather unpleasant, and the poor black paladin had been out of commission for days in a healing pod (because, on top of everything else, he’d also sustained second-degree chemical burns from a particularly nasty acid-spitting species of alien).

 

With their leader on the mend, the other four paladins of Voltron had taken the opportunity to catch up on some much-needed rest: Hunk was sure Lance slept for eighteen hours straight two days in a row, and Keith’s daily training regimen whittled down to about half its length and intensity. Even Pidge had taken a night or two to actually sleep instead of staying up at all hours of the night to sift through data she’d obtained from Beta Traz, but Hunk’s anxiety rendered him restless, tossing and turning in worry despite how his body ached for sleep.

 

After an hour of fruitless attempts at rest, the yellow paladin resigned himself to a (very) early start, and padded his way out of his room to check up on Shiro in the med bay. Unsurprisingly, the castle’s circadian lighting hovered around its dimmest setting at this time of day, only pulsing quietly to life as Hunk crept down the winding hallways towards the familiar destination.

 

He hadn’t expected the full illumination in the med bay upon his arrival, but then again, he hadn’t expected the princess to be here, either.

 

“Hunk!” she called out, clutching her chest in surprise. “My apologies, you gave me a fright: I did not expect anyone else to be up quite this early.”

 

He blinked tiredly, eyes still adjusting to the light. “Likewise, ‘Llura,” he replied, stepping tentatively into the chamber. “I take it that you couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

 

Allura bit her lip, chancing a glance at the occupied healing pod. Within it Shiro lay motionless, human fist clenched and his eyebrows knit together, the hum of his vitals on the monitor deceptively steady. What had remained of the distal portion of his Galra arm after the incident had been completely removed from his body, and now lay in pieces in a metal tray beside the pod.

 

“Is…is something wrong?” asked Hunk, approaching the princess to stand by her side.

 

“No, as far as I can tell, nothing’s wrong,” she replied, her eyes never leaving Shiro’s prone form. “His stats are normal, and his scheduled time of release has not changed.”

 

“But something is still bothering you,” Hunk deduced, fiddling with the hem of his nightshirt.

 

The princess sighed, running her fingers through her scalp in resignation.

 

“I’ve been…having dreams,” she half-whispered, “dreams where I’m—where I’m privy to Shiro’s memories and thoughts.”

 

The yellow paladin gaped at her. “ _What_?! How…since, since _when_?!”

 

“Since Shiro went into the healing pod a few days ago. Initially, I thought that my worrying was causing me to dream about him, but after the second night in a row and, well, seeing and experiencing things that I don’t recall…”

 

She trailed off, sighing deeply. “I suspect that the connection of my quintessence to the castle—and, to some extent, to the Black Lion—is somewhat at fault for all of this. Ever since my fight with Haggar, the link has not quite been as it was. I hadn’t thought this pertinent to mention to the rest of you given all that has happened recently, but after the past two nights it has become apparent that this does warrant addressing.”

 

Hunk paused, taking the information in.

 

“So,” he began slowly, tapping his chin in thought, “You think that weird Altean juju came into play and made our minds more… _permeable_ to one another when the castle acts as some sort of conduit?”

 

“I’m afraid it’s not so simple,” she muttered, “It’s difficult to explain but, in essence, I suppose you are correct.”

 

The yellow paladin swallowed dryly, rubbing the back of his neck.

 

“That’s, um…wow.”

 

“Yes, I believe that colloquial human expression is appropriate given this situation.”

 

A pause.

 

“Allura?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Did you—did you see what Shiro saw during his time as a prisoner of the Galra?”

 

The princess stiffened, an involuntary shudder working its way through her. Hunk realized his mistake a moment too late, flailing and gesticulating as the words tumbled out of his mouth.

 

“Y-you don’t have to answer that! I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but after how Sendak affected him and given all that he’s been through and, and whatever you might have seen must have been really heavy and not something you want to talk about—“

 

“No, Hunk: please, it’s quite all right. Given that these novel connections are likely going to affect all of us at some point, I think it best that we share vital information on our own terms. As for Shiro…”

 

She paused, twirling some of her silver hair between her fingers. “His story is not mine to tell, but yes: I have seen some snatches of his time with the Galra.”

 

Hunk sucked in a breath.

 

“But I’ve—I’ve also seen parts of his time with us here in the castle. With Voltron, I mean,” she continued, and the furrow that had worked its way into her brow seemed to soften. “I’ve seen how he looks upon you—his fellow paladins—with pride and admiration at how far you have all come; how committed we all are to Voltron and its cause, even despite the setbacks we’ve had since Lotor started running amok—“

 

Her hand almost involuntarily reached up to brush her eye scales—prickling with heat and warmth as they were—and Allura suddenly realized that she was blushing.

 

Much to her embarrassment, Hunk seemed to catch on immediately, a soft smile gracing his features and a laugh none too subtly woven into his voice.

 

“I think you and I both know that he reserves some of his sentiments just for you.”

 

For a moment the princess looked as if she wanted to deny the statement, but the truth to his words won out. “I—I suppose he does,” she mumbled, her diplomatic façade making way for a bashful smile. “Has it always been that obvious?”

 

Hunk chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not always, but over time it hasn’t skipped my notice. Or the other paladins,’ either: I think that Lance doesn’t comment on it simply out of sheer respect for him (and, well, maybe a little bit of fear), but when you’re mentally connected to the guy via telepathy in a giant robot for a few hours a day…”

 

He trailed off, shrugging. “I don’t know: are Alteans as bad as Earthlings when it comes to addressing and expressing feelings?”

 

Allura outright laughed, her smile reaching the corners of her face. “Well my current sample size is rather small, but given how much Lance and Keith dance around one another with their bickering? Suffice to say that our species are quite similar in that regard.”

 

Hunk snorted, and his grin turned sly. “So I’m assuming that you’re also harboring some unspoken feelings, then?”

 

The princess spluttered, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her nightgown, realizing too late that her body language had given her away. She sighed, head hung, doing her best to refrain from grinding her teeth together and curling her toes.

 

“Your…discretion would be appreciated.”

 

“And it will be honored, of course: nothing that we have discussed tonight will leave this room. That would, like, violate sleepover law or something.”

 

Allura’s momentary relief was replaced with confusion. “What is a ‘sleepover’?”

 

“Oh, sorry completely forgot about the whole Altea thing for a sec there: a sleepover is an Earth tradition where friends spend time an one another’s homes during the sleep cycle and talk and eat junk food and wear pajamas and watch movies and stuff. Lance and I did it all the time at the Garrison during exam week: we’d talk sometimes straight into the morning about pretty much anything that was on our minds, but the rule was that nothing that we discussed during the sleepover left the room.”

 

She nodded, though still seemed confused. Movies? Junk food? _Pajamas_? “Why is it called a sleepover if no one sleeps?”

 

Hunk laughed. “Whenever I was younger and came home tired after a sleepover my moms would ask me the same thing. But in any case, what I said earlier, about sleepover law? I won’t tell anyone what we discussed here.”

 

“I—I appreciate that,” Allura confirmed, nodding, “though your knowledge of my feelings is sure to permeate through the mental bond you and the rest of the paladins share sooner or later. Be it for better or for worse, secrets are not so easily kept between members of Voltron.”

 

“Which is more the reason for you to talk to Shiro sooner rather than later about this. When he wakes up, maybe? I mean, I recite cartoon theme songs and invent recipes in my head during our mind exercises so that embarrassing things don’t come up, so I doubt him knowing about this through me would ever be an issue, and I don’t want to push you into doing anything you might not want to do, and—“

 

“It really is fine, Hunk,” she interrupted, patting the yellow paladin on the shoulder with a soft, but genuine smile. “Thank you for—thank you for listening. For being here. I’ve had so much on my mind, and having some sense of normalcy restored has been refreshing.”

 

She gave him a quick, but heartfelt hug, which he returned in full.

 

“Any time you need real talk, I’ll be here,” he promised, glancing back at the black paladin in the healing pod. “And when he wakes up, Shiro’ll be there for you, too.”

 

Allura nodded, glancing wistfully at the face behind the glass. The remaining pieces of his Galra tech arm still attached to his body glint like steel, reminding her that Shiro’s recovery would remain incomplete even when he was released from the pod later that day.

 

Speaking of which…

 

“Hunk?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You and Pidge have tinkered around with Galra tech before, right?”

 

He scratched his chin. “We’ve both dabbled when we can, yes.”

 

“Good, because Coran is going to need your help reassembling and upgrading Shiro’s arm.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Just as the pod had promised, Shiro was released later that day, and Coran and the other paladins were all present to witness the princess catching his body as it tumbled from the device as if he weighed no more than a bag of peanuts. He came to in her arms, blinking awake as a final shiver worked its way through his thawing body.

 

“P-princess?” he muttered, almost as if in disbelief, as she helped him gain his footing on the sterile infirmary floor.

 

“Oh my _god_ , just kiss already,” Pidge muttered, just loud enough for Hunk beside her to hear. He snorted, covering his mouth to stifle the laugh with one hand and using the other to nudge Pidge in fake admonishment.

 

“Welcome back, Shiro!” yelled Lance, pushing past Keith to offer their leader a quick hug around the middle. He stiffened, patting Lance awkwardly on the back with his flesh hand until his eventual release, offering a nervous smile to the rest of the castle’s occupants.

 

“It’s good to be back,” he said, voice still hoarse from disuse, though his gaze eventually became somewhat more forlorn as it fell upon what remained of his prosthetic. “Uh…”

 

“We are working on a plan to restore function to your arm, though Pidge, Hunk, and I wanted some input as to precisely what you wanted before we got started,” supplied Coran. “Of course, we do not have to consider such matters right at the moment: we have a delicious dinner prepared in your honor! Come, now, paladins, Allura: I’ve prepared us all some kelunger tubers all the way from Montressor, the flavor is absolutely _fantastic_ this time of year—“

 

The mechanic’s voice trailed off as he proceeded down the hallway, the rest of the castle’s occupants not far behind him. Given his condition Shiro was the last of them to leave, clinging to Allura’s arm with his human hand for support as the muscles in his legs slowly recalled their function. The princess remained effortlessly steadfast and firm beneath him, the warmth of her skin palpable through the feather-light fabric of the healing pod bodysuit. The black paladin blushed, just then realizing how tightly the uniform clung to his skin; how pointedly little of his sculpted silhouette was left to the imagination.

 

Quiznak, now he just felt _naked_.

 

“Sometimes it takes a moment to warm up after being in the pods,” Allura supplied, her face close enough to the crook of his neck that he could feel her breath on his cheek. “There’s absolutely no rush to get to dinner straight away.”

 

Shiro’s cheeks burned: if anything, he was perhaps a little _too_ warm at the moment.

 

“T-thank you, Princess,” he managed to say, fighting down his anxiety with formality, “I just need a tick to adjust, here…”

 

He took a tentative step forward with the princess’s help, continuing to clutch her arm until he was sure he could support his own weight. When he managed to reach the threshold of the medical bay entrance on his own, he turned back briefly, offering Allura a soft smile.

 

“I’m, uh, going to change out of this suit,” he explained, staring at his feet as he chucked nervously. “I feel like I’m wearing footie pajamas.”

 

There was that word again. _Pajamas._ A garment, obviously, with some connection to a now-familiar Earth ritual.

 

Every diplomatic bone in her body tingled at the opportunity to inform Shiro of her knowledge of Earth customs.

 

“You should keep them on,” she offered shyly, hoping that she was phrasing this correctly. “Maybe we can… have a sleepover?”

 

Shiro paled, the blood in his face migrating dangerously quickly to the apex of his—

 

Nope, _not_ going there, not in an outfit _this_ tight—

 

“IneedtousethefacilitiessoI’llseeyouatdinner,” he blurted, screaming at himself in his head as he made a beeline for his quarters.

Allura smiled knowingly, acknowledging the colored mice as they scampered into the room.

 

“For all the good they do, it’s still a marvel that we could never engineer the healing pods to properly filter bodily waste,” she lamented, stooping down to scoop the mice into her hands. “Come now, friends: we’ll save a spot for Shiro in the dining room.”

\- - - - - - -

 

“Did you talk to Shiro yet?”

 

“Well…”

 

It was four in the morning a few days later, and Hunk and Allura had happened upon one another once again, this time in the ship’s galley. They sat across from one another, perched on a pair of countertops as a bowl of the Altean equivalent of popcorn floated between them, the occasional periods of silence punctuated by the crunch and crackle of the salty snack. Allura twirled a strand of hair between her fingers, tapping her foot lightly against a nearby cabinet as she more properly articulated a response.

 

“I hate to be one to make excuses, but Shiro has remained somewhat…elusive since emerging from the healing pod. I’ve attempted to speak with him several times, but between responding to all of the distress calls and having Lotor and his fleet tailing us so closely these days…”

 

She trailed off, sighing deeply as she handed each of the mice a piece of ‘popcorn (if Hunk had recalled her correctly, it was called _fodertsh-el_ or _fadertish-al_ or something of the sort)’. “With all we’re going through as a team right now, I’m hesitant to bring this additional set of complications into the mix as it is. In any case, my feelings—and Shiro’s feelings—should never take priority over Voltron and our mission.”

 

“I can’t claim to understand how you’re feeling right now, Allura,” he began, voice soft and slow, “but you seem to think that a relationship, formal or otherwise, inherently complicates matters. I’ve never been in a relationship, but from what I’ve seen at least clearing up the air about feelings and any matter of emotional baggage might actually allow you two to work better as a team. I mean, when you think about it, Keith and Lance were _impossible_ until Sendak’s little surprise attack back on Arus forced them to communicate and collaborate with one another. Well, they’re _still_ impossible now, but you have to admit that they’ve gotten along better as a team since then, and carrying out our duties as Voltron has been made all the better for it.”

 

The engineer smiled at her, his gaze somewhat wistful. “Besides…I hesitate to be a pessimist but, living the lives we lead, there’s not always going to be an opportunity to say what you feel before it’s too late.”

 

Allura glanced up, lips pursed, before staring at her knees again.

 

“I wanted to tell him,” she whispered, her voice almost unintelligible. “Right before the wormhole incident and the Galra captured me—when I thought I’d never see him again—I almost did. But I didn’t want to give him a reason to come back, and then he—he went ahead, gathered all of you, and came back for me anyway.”

 

The mice had since nestled into her lap, their little bodies rising and falling with each breath, snuggling closer to one another atop her skirt as she stroked them lightly with the tips of her fingers. Now more than ever she was the epitome of Disney princessdom—what with her flowing silk nightgown and woodland friends, cheeks pink and alight like a holiday tree—and Hunk could only gape in awe.

 

Objectively, the engineer had always considered Allura absolutely stunning: he hadn’t been the least bit surprised when Lance had flirted with her quite literally the moment she’d emerged from cryostasis, nor had he found ‘lion goddess’ (the epithet that the Arusians had used to describe her) unfitting in the least. Though her beauty had always extended far further than her appearance (how could it not, with her kindness and strength and natural inclination to lead?), something about her now made her positively sublime: it had caught Hunk off guard, rolling through him like a wave, the force of it all momentarily stealing his breath.

 

Forget ‘unspoken feelings’: this was _far_ more advanced than he’d imagined.

 

“You love him, don’t you?”

 

If it were possible Allura’s eye scales glowed even brighter, highlighting the deep brown flesh of her cheeks: the reaction was answer enough, and Hunk beamed brighter than he recalled doing in a very long time.

 

\- - - - - - -


	5. Year 2 (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunk and Pidge bond over a mutual interest, while Keith and Lance bond at the bench press. Like bros. 
> 
> Warnings: some mild physical affection, very, _very_ mild voyeurism (Pidge takes a photo without the people in the photo's knowledge)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> p> ** _( SEASON 2 SPOILERS AHEAD!)_**
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> _(Some minor edits have been made to fit the Season 2 timeline: specifically, Pidge finding info on her brother at the Beta Traz prison, Keith’s Galra lineage, and Prince Lotor (apparently) being appointed in Zarkon’s place. I’m assuming that Shiro will reappear, but we’ll see how things go ;] )_

**Year II (continued)**

 

“You seem unusually happy today.”

 

Pidge continued to sort through the junk receptacle they’d recovered about a week ago from the wreckage of their battle with Zarkon, knee-deep in scrap metal and defunct circuit boards as she searched for bits of alloy that matched the sturdy material of Shiro’s arm. Beside her, perched on an upturned box, Hunk had been dutifully pulling apart a tangle of wires and cables for over an hour, humming quietly under his breath as he worked. One of the mice—the green one—occasionally shifted in his work apron pocket, snuggling into the warmth of his chest as they napped.

 

The engineer paused to look up, his eyes comically large under the magnification of his goggles, looking almost as he had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. Pidge smirked at the sight, wiping a bit of engine grease from her cheek as the silence did its work. A moment later Hunk finally relented, fishing a pair of Altean tweezers out of his back pocket to pry at some particularly fine wires.

 

“What makes you think that?” he asked, doing his best to conceal the true extent of the giddiness that had been blooming in his chest since Allura’s confession. As someone who frequently wore his heart on his sleeve, it hadn’t been easy, and at times he hadn’t been able to resist drawing hearts in the air with his fingers or winking in the princess’s direction whenever she was within even five feet of Shiro and the other paladins hadn’t been looking (of course, Coran had already caught him doing the former at least once, and had erupted into a fit of coughs that sounded suspiciously like thinly-veiled laughter when Allura had glared in Hunk’s direction, flushing with fury).

 

“That’s the third Celine Dion song you’ve hummed in fifteen minutes,” Pidge replied, shaking Hunk from his reminiscence, as if it were the most obvious observation in the world.

 

The yellow paladin shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I’m in a Celine Dion mood, I guess. Lance gave me a USB with a bunch of her albums on it for my birthday last year, and I found it just recently.”

 

His story was true—and Pidge knew it, too—but she still wasn’t buying it. She squinted at him, her eyes steely despite their warm amber hue.

 

“You know something I don’t,” she concluded, grinning wide in triumph as his mouth opened just enough to betray the denial before it had even rolled off of his tongue.

 

He supposed he deserved this after questioning Allura like he had, but that didn’t mean that he would relent so easily. A promise was a promise, after all.

 

“…I might,” Hunk supplied, smirking cryptically right back at her. She scoffed, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “I fucking knew it” before she picked up the bucket she’d been using to collect metal, emptied its meager contents onto the floor of the receptacle, and placed it upside-down in front of him, planting her butt on the makeshift stool and scooting forward until their knees touched.

 

“Spill the space beans,” she demanded, feeling her poker face break as Hunk laughed from somewhere deep within his belly, his eyes scrunching up in the corners.

 

“’Fraid I can’t,” he quipped, folding his arms triumphantly over his broad chest (being sure to avoid jostling or crushing the slumbering mouse in his pocket, of course). “My… _informant_ has invoked sleepover law.”

 

Pidge looked like she was about to throw something, but she settled for a small litany of curses that would have made even Iverson blush before folding her own arms, puffing out her chest as if to size Hunk up. Even when sitting, the yellow paladin towered a good six or seven inches over her, so the both of them ended up crumbling under snorts and giggles.

 

“Damn you and your morals,” she huffed, punching her friend playfully in the shoulder. “You n’ Lance better not be talking shit about the rest of us behind our backs.”

 

“We could never,” Hunk assured, patting the green paladin on the back. “Besides, if things proceed as they are supposed to, you’ll know sure enough.”

 

“Oh, come _on_ , Hunk: now I _really_ want to know!”

 

“All in due time, Pidge. All in due time. For now, though, let’s get those parts wrangled together: we don’t want to keep Shiro waiting too much longer now, do we?”

 

Pidge eyed the scattered metal at her feet, sighing deeply as she scooped the discarded pieces into a pile and returned the bucket to its original purpose.

 

“ _Fine_ ,” she conceded, returning to a pile of unsorted junk that was at least half her height, “but you’re making me space chicken nuggets next time you’re in the kitchen.”

 

Hunk feigned a groan. “So needy, Pidge,” he teased. “Fine: but only if you help me out with something. C’mere a sec.”

 

She trudged back, curiosity piqued once more when the engineer fished a data pad out of one of his back pockets and scrolled through the contents. He stopped when the schematics for the castle’s PA system came into view, then selected another tab detailing the executive controls of Shiro’s arm (it had been near the wrist, and still remained in pieces in a tray in the infirmary).

 

“Any interest in orchestrating another prank?”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

As the trio would come to find out over the next couple of days, the reconstruction of Shiro’s prosthetic arm was nothing short of complicated: even Coran struggled to obtain a grasp on the more magical aspects of the object (rooted as they were in advanced Druid knowledge that the Alteans had not become privy to in the last ten millennia), in the end they’d all had to all concede to the fact that some aspects of the Druid’s meddling would inevitably remain unchanged for the time being. Shiro had taken it in stride, though, and before long he’d begun to focus all of his energy on modifying the aspects of his arm that he could change.

 

As time went on, however, the team made some interesting discoveries: the prosthetic seemed to be able to repair itself to some extent, and within ten days of his emergence from the healing pod Shiro had woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, a sharp pain travelling up and down the affected limb. A quick scan had revealed that the neural connections that had animated the limb were beginning to knit themselves back together, piece by piece, drawing upon the reserve metals in the prosthetic’s intact portions to elongate the components that had been lost. Of course, the process had been excruciatingly painful, and Coran had had to sedate the black paladin for the better part of a week while the autonomous repair mechanism (dubbed A.R.M. rather ironically by Pidge) had run its course.

 

Partway through day five of Shiro’s sedation, Pidge was dutifully focused on testing the compatibility of various Altean interfaces with the existing components of the Galra arm. To date every attempt had been met with failure: what the druids had constructed seemed impervious to Altean technology, and at this hour Hunk wasn’t awake to consult on potential hardware solutions that involved Earth tech. Pidge was a certifiable genius, but no one had to tell her that Hunk still surpassed her in his troubleshooting capabilities: from experience she knew that she could go at this for another six hours and get nowhere, but that Hunk would take one look at it and have a list of potential solutions within the minute.

 

Drawing the conclusion that she would probably not get any further tonight with her work anyway, the green paladin switched off her overhead lamp and prepared to head back to her bunk, figuring that she’d check up on Shiro in the infirmary for just a tick or two on the way back.

 

Pidge had just been about to stroll in and make a cursory check when she noticed a familiar head of silver hair glinting in the low light. Puzzled, she poked her nose across the threshold, and grinned ear to ear at the sight that beheld her.

 

It appeared almost as if Allura had passed out on the side of the bed, her cheek pressed atop her folded arms and slouching rather un princess-like in a plush, cloud-white infirmary chair. What was visible of her back slowly rose and fell at even tempo, indicating that she had long since fallen asleep at the black paladin’s makeshift bedside.

 

Curious, Pidge tiptoed in, fumbling in one of her back pockets for the cellphone she carried on hand just for moments like these, not even glancing at the screen as she pulled up the camera app. After double-checking that the click sound effect and flash had been disabled, she took half a dozen photos in quick succession. She barely held back a maniacal giggle when, upon closer inspection, Allura appeared to have covered Shiro’s human hand in one of her own prior to falling asleep.

 

Ugh, this was so gag-worthy that it was transcending into ‘ _cute_ ’ territory. Hunk would probably cry when she showed him these photos tomorrow.

 

Speaking of: if Hunk had been here, he definitely would have noticed how cold the room was: having grown up in Hawai’i, anything below seventy Fahrenheit was cold for him, and even in long sleeves Pidge was beginning to feel the chill. In a few ticks she had fetched a few blankets from one of the infirmary cabinets (they’d been used quite frequently to warm people up after spending time in the healing pods) and draped them across the adults’ sleeping forms.

 

“Sweet dreams,” she snickered (though with an edge of fondness she couldn’t deny), conceding to take her own advice as she finally headed off to bed.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Hunk nearly crushed the USB drive that had been shoved under his door sometime early that morning as he’d hopped into the left leg of his paladin suit, swearing under his breath as the cold green metal made contact with the bottom of his foot. He’d plugged the stick into the desktop interface half-clothed, shimmying into the remainder of the flexible black material as the contents of the flash drive loaded.

 

A single image file—titled _;).gif_ —accompanied by what appeared to be the entire Celine Dion discography appeared in the folder window.

 

“Pidge, what the hell—?”

 

He clicked the image file, nearly falling on his ass again when a poor-quality cell phone photo of Allura fast asleep next to Shiro’s bed in the infirmary appeared on the screen. She’d drawn a large red circle around their clasped hands using some shit PC program and her mouse trackpad, the words ‘SHALLURA CONFIRMED???’ in large-point Comic Sans scrolling across the bottom.

 

 _Shallura_? What in the world was—? Oh. Okay.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Pidge practically launched herself at Hunk when he reached the training deck a few minutes later, pulling him down to her level so that she could whisper something in his ear. Keith and Lance looked on, the both of them raising their eyebrows in unison as Hunk had rolled his eyes and Pidge had cackled.

 

“Whatever they’re talking about must be remarkably amusing,” muttered Keith almost offhandedly as he stifled a yawn. He glanced at Lance, unsurprised to see that the blue paladin looked like he was going to have a goddamn aneurism if he didn’t figure out what Hunk and Pidge were laughing about _right now_.

 

Keith maybe gave him three seconds.

 

Two.

 

One…

 

“Hey, you wanna fill us in over here!?” he blurted, throwing his arms exasperatedly at the chatting pair, “or are Mullet and I just gonna have to wait until Allura gets here to get the deets?”

 

If it were possible Pidge laughed even harder, sending Hunk another look that made him splutter and grin.

 

“Oh my god, is she _still there_ —?”

 

The two of them descended into giggles again—both at poor Allura’s expense as well as Lance’s—and the latter dramatically disregarded the pair as he marched towards one of the weight benches.

 

“Whatever, it’s probably some WEIRD NERD JOKE that nobody else would get anyways,” he declared loudly, checking the weights on either side before he slid lithely onto the seat. Keith followed not long after, peering over as Lance tested his grip on the bar.

 

“Need a spotter?”

 

Lance scoffed. “More like a new best friend,” he muttered, completing a few reps in quick succession. “With Shiro’s arm a total wreck, Hunk has more important things to do now than to deal with me. I know he doesn’t mean to do it—he’s far too nice to do anything petty like that—but it still hurts, you know? I mean, back at the Garrison, Hunk and I used to talk about _everything_ —assignments, family stuff, gossip, who we had crushes on…and now I’m lucky if I get ten minutes with the guy.”

 

Keith hummed in acknowledgement. “’S rough,” he replied, with just enough sincerity that Lance had to do a double-take and confirm that it was _Keith_ talking.

 

“I mean, I guess I kind of get it? Before Shiro…left, he was one of my only friends. When he escaped the Galra and came back, suddenly he was everyone else’s friend, too? He spent so much time with Pidge on Arus, and then he disappeared after our fight with Zarkon and, I don’t know, I kind of felt like, well…”

 

“…like you weren’t a priority anymore?” Lance finished as he completed the set, and Keith nodded.

 

“Yeah…and after not having seen him in over a year, it sucked, too: we were all kind of just _thrown in_ to this whole Voltron thing and, and with Shiro being the leader and all…”

 

Both boys sighed.

 

“Well, then, Mullet, I suppose you _do_ get it. Join the Langst Club.”

 

The red paladin couldn’t help but smile, just a hint of color tingeing his cheeks as Lance offered a wry grin back.

 

“Well, I can’t replace Hunk, but if you ever need a friend to talk gossip, or family, or whatever… I’m game, okay?”

 

Lance started, swiveling his head to look at Keith in the eye, his mouth hanging slightly open in surprise. He recovered quickly, though, and re-engaged the weights for another set.

 

“What, am I not allowed to talk crushes?” he replied playfully, offering Keith a genuine smile.

 

“If you were I don’t think you’d ever stop talking,” he teased, snickering as Lance stuck out his foot in retaliation.

 

“Jerk! Fine: you can’t talk crushes to _me either_ then, Keithey-boy, so you’d better have some good gossip when you come in to cash you friend-points!”

 

Keith smirked. “I can deal with that.”

 

\- - - - - - -


	6. Year 2 (part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunk and Pidge lay the groundwork for their latest prank with some creative problem-solving.

**Year II (continued)**

 

The youngest four paladins had paired off for preparatory stretches and strength exercises while they awaited the princess and her advisor, biding their time as efficiently as they could given the year of formal training they’d sustained. Keith and Lance had moved on to light sparring, while Pidge and Hunk passed around the Altean equivalent of a medicine ball as they each balanced on hovering plates. Clad as they were in the paladin armor (which Shiro had insisted upon: after all, they’d be wearing the lightweight, if slightly bulky plating when out in the field, so getting used to maneuvering in the armor was as much a part of training as the drills themselves), the teenagers had all built up quite a sweat, and were all so focused that they almost missed the soft hiss of the deck doors as they depressurized and opened.

 

“Shiro!” Pidge cried, hopping somewhat clumsily off of her set of levitating disks to greet their leader, embracing him in a gentle hug as the rest of the paladins followed suit behind her.

 

“Are you feeling any better?” asked Lance, clapping him lightly on the shoulder with a hopeful grin.

 

“Yeah, definitely,” Shiro affirmed, eyes flicking to his Galra arm. “Allura and Coran conducted a couple of scans this morning, and they confirmed that most of the organic-to-inorganic neural connections have been fixed. See? My elbow works again…”

 

With just a touch of strain Shiro demonstrated, and Hunk and Pidge beamed.

 

“Excellent! Hunk and I have been working on finding some replacement metal for the components of the fingers and wrist. Keith n’ Lance n’ I went out about a week ago and used a tractor beam to salvage some parts from the wreckage of our battle with Zarkon, and—“

 

“Wait, you guys _went back_ —“

 

“Aaaand Shiro didn’t need to know about that!” interrupted Coran, stumbling onto the training deck and waving his arms about frantically. “It was no big deal, really: the areas wasn’t particularly well-guarded, and the other salvage crews didn’t bother us _that_ much…”

 

“All without my express permission, might I add,” supplied Allura, appearing as regal (and disapproving) as ever as she strolled in. Within seconds Shiro matched her visage, but the thinly-veiled guilt was not lost on the rest of them.

 

“Oh, come _on_ , Shiro, it wasn’t _that_ dangerous,” whined Lance, puffing out his chest proudly. “Not even the Galra send out patrols to guard space junk. Besides, where else were we gonna get Druid voodoo-enhanced super-alloys without infiltrating the Galra base directly again?”

 

“You were pursued by no fewer than _seven Galra battlecruisers_ , Lance!”

 

“I never said my plan was _perfect_ , but we got out of there and now Pidge and Hunk get to dumpster dive for parts for Shiro’s new hand!” Lance retorted, now gesturing towards the red paladin. “Besides, Keith was his usual perfect pilot self and picked off every single one of those cruisers before they even got close to us!”

 

Keith’s shoulders tensed at the casual complement, glancing somewhat apologetically at Shiro as the older man made eye contact.

 

“What? The plan was solid and, well, we _were_ kind of bored…,” he mumbled, rubbing one of his elbows. “Pidge, Hunk, and Coran were doing all of the work, and Lance and I wanted to do our part.”

 

The princess and the black paladin looked like they were going to initiate a long speech and, well, Pidge was hungry and frankly quite tired of the bickering.

 

“Come _on_ , guys,” she sighed, stepping between Allura and Shiro as she rubbed her glasses on her shirt. “I thought you’d both be glad that these two clowns were finally getting along for more than twenty minutes at a time.”

 

“Daww, Pidge; thanks for sticking up for us!” beamed Lance, pulling the girl into a quick, but tight hug. She squawked in defiance, but let the blue paladin embrace her, muttering something under her breath about sticking _something_ up something _else_ if he didn’t let her go that instant (it worked quite well). After all, she wasn’t in it for the brownie points: the only reasons she’d endorsed them were (a) fewer argument-induced headaches and (b) the fact that she now had enough Galra tech at her (literal) disposal to keep her entertained and busy for a decade.

 

“ _Weeeeell_ shall we head to the kitchen, then?” suggested Hunk, tentatively waving the proverbial white flag for the time being as Lance continued to eye Pidge somewhat warily. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Brunch came and went, and soon Hunk and Pidge were back to their work with Shiro’s arm. Their dumpster dive had proven fruitful, and within an hour they’d set up small samples of the magical alloy to test its pliability and strength: as was to be expected, the pieces they’d obtained were not the shape or thickness they needed to be to replace the pieces that had been lost, so they’d have to fiddle around with a few cutting and shaping options to see what worked best first.

 

Again, as was to be expected, the alloy was near-impervious to virtually every controlled effort Hunk and Pidge could throw at it: heat lasers, vices, and micro-saws edged with some strange mineral that ranked even higher on the Mohs scale than diamonds couldn’t even scratch it, and consulting with Coran hadn’t yielded any options that weren’t at _least_ as cumbersome as zooming across the galaxy and completing various errands to obtain that damn Yaxelian pearl. At one point Pidge had even attempted to manipulate the metal with her mind as she had on that one planet that she couldn’t quite remember the name of at the moment, which had only resulted in Hunk’s guffawing laughter and a nose-pinching headache. And, of course, they couldn’t just as well form Voltron and hit the alloy pieces with the mega-sword and hope that the extremely large and imprecise blade would make the micro-cuts that they would need.

 

“Fucking _fuck_ , every time we get close something like this happens again!” yelled Pidge, slamming the delicate micro-saw back on to the table as yet another field test failed. She rubbed her temples with her thumbs, breathing deeply as the frustration ran its way through her. “How the quiznak are we supposed to cut and shape an impervious material?”

 

Hunk resumed flipping through his notes on his handheld, going over a few ideas that he’d jotted down earlier that week when Coran had permitted them access to an informational database of all of the tools and materials available for use in the castle. They’d exhausted just about every item on their candidacy list, and the recognition they’d gained as paladins over the last year ensured that none of them were in a position to visit any space malls or major trading centers where the Galra would be watching. Even with Allura’s shapeshifting abilities, past experience told them that Druids and Galra alike could see through such ruses.

 

“I hate to say this, but I’m stumped,” Hunk sighed, doodling a taco in the margins of his notes. “Unless we can get our hands on some Druid magic or somehow shrink the Lions down to be the size of the mice and have them form mini-Voltron and cut these pieces up, I’m not sure what we’re going to be able to do.”

 

“Well, we’ve been out here a year and’ve seen pretty much everything from giant, sentient tardigrades to seed pods that can turn into automobile robots, but nothing even remotely close to a shrink ray,” she mumbled, chewing a fingernail. Even if they could do such a thing, it would be impractical and far from parsimonious to shrink down something so large: surely there was _something_ in the castle they could use that could operate on a small scale that could channel the power that they needed…

 

“Wait a tic…”

 

She’d practically run to her laptop, typing furiously as Hunk perked up at the sudden burst of activity. He shuffled over, peering over the green paladin’s shoulder as she sifted through her tabs, muttering under her breath as dozens of images of Balmera crystals popped up.

 

“Allura focuses her quintessence through a massive Balmera crystal to fuel the castle, including its attack and defense mechanisms. I’ll bet that we can obtain a smaller crystal, create a conduit for Allura to channel her energy into—“

 

“—and re-create the configuration of the castle’s laser cannon at a smaller scale to cut through the alloy! Pidge, that’s genius!”

 

Pidge smirked at the complement as she continued to type, finally pulling up a familiar file: the colossal crystal they’d used to power the teledove and gravity generator.

 

“When Allura harvested this crystal a few months ago, it had to be cut and shaped to accommodate the teledove’s size,” she explained. “I asked to keep a few of the pieces to study to see if we could somehow use them as backup power if the castle’s systems ever failed again. The shards I salvaged weren’t enough to do something at that large of a scale, but they might be enough to fashion a manual laser that can cut through the alloy.”

 

Hunk had already pulled out his data pad and searched the castle’s schematics, dropping the appropriate files detailing the build of the castle’s main laser cannon into Pidge’s data cloud. At a glance it seemed to function much like an Earth-made ruby laser would: the balmera crystal, of course, replaced the ruby, while a fine layer of polished scaltrite coated the interior of the reflection cylinder and replaced the opaque mirror.

 

“Convergent evolution, my friend,” quipped Hunk, nodding to himself as he scanned the translated diagrams. “You think you can get these to render in 3D so that we can start to get an idea of what size we should render the laser’s components?”

 

And, of course, she’d already synced with the castle’s projector and re-sized the renderings before he could even finish his request, bouncing out of her chair to inspect the projection. It was probably the size of an industrial printer back at the Garrison, the barrel of the laser itself about the length of Pidge’s arm.

 

“At this size the laser would fire a beam that is approximately 1.1 millimeters in diameter,” Pidge remarked, inputting some numbers into the holoscreen. “Do you still have that dry scaltrite mix, or did we have enough left over from when you and Keith excavated that weblum’s anus?”

 

Hunk chuckle-snorted: Lance made similar quips at Keith at least once a week when Shiro and Allura weren’t around to scold him (“Been in anyone else’s ass lately, Mullet-Head?”), and Keith’s telltale flush never failed to make the blue paladin cackle with glee.

 

“The cavity we were in was more along the lines of a rectum,” he corrected, elbowing Pidge (who had cracked a devilish smirk herself) lightly in the shoulder, “but I think we had more than enough left over from the teledove’s construction to coat the inside of a steel tube. It works just like rosin, so it should melt and cure into a thin layer at a temperature achievable in a convection oven.”

 

“Excellent: I’ll cut and shape the crystal, then, and see if Allura keeps any quartz on board for the coil, and then—“

 

“Uh, Pidge?”

 

She blinked.

 

“It’s, like, three in the morning: I doubt that Allura’s gonna be awake.”

 

“It’s…”

 

Pidge’s eyes travelled to the top-right corner of her laptop screen, grimacing when the readout confirmed Hunk’s suspicions. Her frown deepened when a reminder pinged just a few moments later:

 

_Training at 0600._

 

“Zarkon’s _balls_.”

 

 

\- - - - - - -

 

The laser had worked.

 

It had been a week since Pidge’s early morning epiphany, and she and Hunk had managed to assemble the machine in just a few days. After several successful tests, they’d determined that a short burst from the laser super-heated the alloy to sufficiently bend it with tongs while a longer, more concentrated burst could cut clean through.

 

When it had come time to cut the pieces for Shiro’s arm, the process had been quite a sight: Hunk operated the controls with his steady hands, while Pidge had alternated between making sure that the apparatus didn’t overheat and ensuring that Allura—their power source—was properly fed and hydrated as the task wore on. Coran and the other paladins had even topped by to observe for awhile, each of them cheering their teammates on as each piece was meticulously cut and shaped.

 

It took two six-hour shifts, but by the evening of the second day the hand’s components were complete—just in time for Hunk and Pidge to make some last-minute tweaks and to introduce the pieces to the intact portions of Shiro’s arm. If everything went according to plan, the magic coursing through the metal limb would recognize the pieces as non-foreign matter and integrate the newly crafted pieces into the original. He’d be sedated for another few days, but the black paladin would be back to one hundred percent the moment he woke up.

 

To both Hunk and Pidge’s amusement, the promise of a full recovery didn’t seem to preclude Allura from spending hours by his bedside in the med bay. Over the span of two more days the both of them had caught the princess asleep at his side during their routine checks on the arm’s ‘healing’ process twice, the both of them snickering quietly as they checked the monitors and ensured that their own personal addition to the arm’s broadcast system was integrating correctly (in addition, of course, to checking the overall integrity of the healing), leaving the two of them to sleep undisturbed for as long as they could.


	7. Year 2 (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunk registers the Hunk Hug Bank, Pidge has a hero crush, and their hard work comes to fruition.
> 
> EDIT: Now with an illustration! :D

**Year II** (continued)

 

“And you’re _sure_ you registered the sensor to Allura’s bio-signature and not someone else’s, right?”

 

“Of _course_ I’m sure, Hunk!” Pidge hissed, yanking her headphones off to turn around and glare at the yellow paladin. “I triple-checked everything before we introduced the parts back to Shiro’s arm! I’m telling you, Coran must have changed the castle’s broadcasting frequency since the schematics in your data pad were made. I’ve even checked to see if the speakers work, and they were fully operational two days ago!”

 

It had been about a month since Shiro’s arm had been completely fixed, and the pair had yet to see their well-planned meddling come to fruition: if all went according to plan, then the entire castle would get a surprise if Allura ever made skin-to-metal contact with Shiro’s arm when his heart rate was above 80 beats per minute. Both Pidge and Hunk had been at the edges of their seats whenever the two adults were within five feet of one another but, as days turned into weeks without the desired reaction, they’d both lost faith in their handiwork. They were currently sharing a sofa meant for about four people in one of the main lounge areas, checking and re-checking the electrical aspects of their project to ensure that nothing had gone wrong on their part.

 

“I don’t mean to cast any doubt on your abilities, Pidge, but it’s been a _month_! They practically _held hands_ while Shiro was sedated: surely they’ve had hand-to-hand contact at least _once_ since then!”

 

Pidge bit her lip, frowning as she thought back to all of the times that Shiro had ruffled her hair or patted her shoulder in the last year, realizing with disdain that she probably would have remembered the cold sting of metal on her sensitive scalp.

 

“That’s just it, though,” she muttered forlornly. “He doesn’t—Shiro doesn’t touch people with his right hand. Not since—well, you know.“

 

Hunk’s expression softened. He looked away, guilt prickling in his stomach, covering his mouth with his hand.

 

“You’re right,” he muttered after a moment. “I—I’d never noticed.”

 

“That makes two of us, then. He must…I mean, I know that he’s always hated what the Galra did to him, but to think that he’s been consciously avoiding direct contact with it all this time…I mean, in the grand scheme of things it isn’t that big of a deal; he’s dealt with far worse complications, but to be constantly reminded that you’ll never fully feel your dominant hand again? To know that, once upon a time, it did horrible things to other people in the gladiator ring, and that it could easily do the same to all of us—“

 

Oh.

 

She leaned into Hunk’s shoulder, clinging to his warmth as the weight of that knowledge bore down around her, cold and heavy and all too suddenly brought to the forefront of her mind. Hunk clung back almost instinctively, his massive hand ghosting at her shoulder before he pulled her in to a side-hug. Pidge stiffened at the contact, which Hunk seemed to notice, and in an instant his hand was gone.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I forgot that you’re not a big hug person!” he stammered, eyes wide with remorse as he put some distance between them. Pidge blinked owlishly, taking a moment to process the reasoning behind Hunk’s actions before she started to laugh.

 

“I appreciate the concern, Hunk,” she replied, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, “though I can see why you’d think I’m not a hug person, what with how pissed I get when Lance tries to pick me up or squeeze me or— _eeeugh_. I love the guy, but he’s _really_ touchy, and his shampoo smells like the boys’ locker room back at the Garrison and makes me sneeze.”

 

The yellow paladin seemed to understand, exhaling in relief as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “I always thought that I was the only person who couldn’t stand that smell,” he chuckled, “but I still should have asked first.”

 

“Eh, none of us are perfect. Besides, you give good hugs. I was just…startled is all. Whenever I had a bad day, Matt would hug me the same way. We’d just sit together and not talk for awhile. I don’t know how or why, but I always managed to feel better afterwards.”

 

Pidge carefully removed her glasses to clean the lenses on her shirt, but Hunk didn’t miss how she wiped her eyes as she put them back on.

 

“Your brother is out there, Pidge,” he murmured, turning to face her fully now. “I know we’ve been really busy with dealing with Lotor and fixing up Shiro’s arm, but you will see him again, and you two will have all the time in the world to catch up on all of those sibling side-hugs.”

 

The green paladin sniffled, but managed to chuckle. “Thanks. For now, though, I’d gladly accept a Hunk side hug—well, if that offer is still on the table.”

 

He didn’t need telling twice.

 

“Come on, Pidge, didn’t you get the memo? Everyone on this ship has infinite credits in the Hunk hug bank.”

 

She sighed into his warmth, humming contentedly as he chuckled at his own joke.

 

“Good, because I might have to capitalize on that a bit more often.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Don’t forget to guard your right, Shiro!”

 

Allura teasingly tapped the black paladin’s right temple with the padded end of her Altean bo staff, smirking as she saw Coran adding another tally by her name on the projected scoreboard out of the corner of her eye. She twirled around him, striking the place she knew his foot would land as he feinted left.

 

From the sidelines Pidge smiled: Keith seemed to be getting more and more agitated at Shiro’s impending loss, while Lance had appointed himself as Allura’s personal cheerleader and made his phone blare air horn noises every time she’d landed a hit. Hunk was positively starry-eyed, watching both fighters with absolute reverence as they practically danced across the floor.

 

After hearing of the ass-kicking Allura had delivered to Haggar during their fight with Zarkon a few months ago, the paladins had been _begging_ her to do some demos with her staff for them. Now that Shiro was present, conscious, and in fighting shape again, it hadn’t taken her much convincing.

 

And _damn_ , the way she was moving and parrying and darting around Shiro’s attacks was _doing things_ to her: granted, it didn’t take much for Allura to get a jaw to drop, but every move made Pidge more and more aware of the crucible of admiration, jealousy, attraction, and anxiety that was stewing in her gut. She supposed this was the closest thing to the concept of the ‘hero-crush’ phenomenon that her fifteen year-old sex-queer self had encountered, and at this point was more than ready for whatever this was to stop because it was uncomfortable and impractical and _oh my god_ did she just _pole vault_ to dodge that hit and yep she was _way_ too gay for this—

 

She’d pinned Shiro to the ground, a knee on his chest and the tip of the staff digging into is right bicep to incapacitate his metal arm, but he wasn’t going to give up yet: he wrapped his legs around her torso, taking advantage of her split second of hubris to dislodge the staff and flip the both of them over, pressing the handle of the weapon against her throat as he straddled her torso.

 

Of course, Lance took the opportunity to let loose a particularly loud wolf-whistle, causing Shiro to loosen his grip and redden to the ears. Before he could scold Lance for the inappropriate remark, Allura had used her brute strength to push Shiro off of her and re-claim the staff, striking his left wrist to loosen his vice grip on the weapon’s handle and pulling the rest of the arm into a position that would have easily dislocated his shoulder should she have applied just a _little_ more pressure. He was forced face-first into the ground, mechanical arm crumpled uselessly beneath the weight of his chest, his legs too tired to attempt vaulting her off.

 

“Yield,” he muttered, exhaling as she unceremoniously released him like a hamper of dirty laundry onto the floor. Shiro rolled onto his back, left wrist held close to his chest as he took in gulps of air. The other paladins and Coran erupted in applause at the performance, while the mice (who had all been perched on Hunk’s shoulders) leaped and trilled in approval of their princess’s victory.

 

“It figures,” Shiro remarked breathily, smiling up at the princess as she bent down to pick up the discarded weapon. “You didn’t even need that staff to beat me.”

 

Allura chuckled, her preening none too subtle. “You’ve spent enough time in the healing pods this turn,” she retorted, striking the staff into the floor twice before it disappeared. “Besides, you of all people should know that it is the person that wields the weapon—and not the weapon itself—that decides the outcome of the battle.”

 

Her gaze flicked momentarily to his Galra arm before she offered him a hand.

 

“Now are you going to lounge about here all day, or shall we get started?”

 

Shiro accepted, but in his addled state he’d overestimated how much effort would be needed on his part to hoist himself up: he nearly crashed into her when she brought him to his feet in a single, effortless, fluid motion, her right hand clasped firmly between both of his.

 

The black paladin didn’t even have tome to register how close their foreheads were when he felt something in his Galra arm suddenly warm up, pulsing with the beat of his heart. A single click emanated from somewhere above them, and in an instant the castle’s PA system was fully activated.

 

Everyone in the room jumped when the distinct whine of a saxophone blared over the speakers, filling the room with bone-rattling sound. Lance practically screamed, and Keith had unsheathed his Marmora blade the instant the foreign noise had registered in his ears. Pidge and Hunk, on the other hand, were trying (and failing) to contain their excitement, giggling and grinning and whispering none too quietly to one another.

 

Shiro stiffened, clutching Allura’s hand more tightly than he’d intended to as he was momentarily transported back to the annual Garrison Promenade, slow-dancing in a tuxedo that was slightly too large for him with a faceless girl in a satin blue dress.

 

As the music continued, Keith sheathed his weapon, his eyebrows pinching together in confusion as the tune became more and more familiar to his ear.

 

“Is this…?”

 

“Oh my _god_ , it’s _Careless Whisper_!” Lance cackled, the vestiges of his momentary terror now long gone. “It’s fucking _Careless Whisper_ , but _how_ —?”

 

“Oh, is this an Earth ballad?” Coran interrupted, swaying slightly to the music. “I quite like it, actually! Reminds me of the ceremonial anointment music that was played during the Wogalona Festival on PAX-5. Did it have an intended purpose in any Earthling rituals?”

 

Lance and Keith looked at one another, both of them lost on explaining this particular tidbit of Earth culture. The red paladin shrugged and Lance nodded.

 

“It’s a meme,” they replied in unison, as if that somehow explained everything.

 


	8. Year 2 (part 5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The younger paladins hang out in the kitchen, Lance flirts, and Pidge doesn't understand body language.
> 
> EDIT: Now with art! Scroll down to see! :3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Very brief mention of internalized homophobia.

 

 **Year II** (continued)

 

 

Pidge had been typing away at her laptop in the kitchen, conversing casually with Hunk and Keith about their latest extraterrestrial visit. Keith had been roped into sous chef duty and was working his way through dicing a small mountain of Kelunger tubers, while Hunk expertly sautéed some strange cross between an onion and a green pepper over the stove. The fumes were making his eyes water, so Pidge had insisted on grabbing a pair of goggles from the lab. Even Keith had smiled at how ridiculous the yellow paladin looked with industrial, UV-protection goggles strapped around his head, his coarse hair sticking out at odd angles under the elastic band, and Pidge had taken the opportunity to snag a few photos before he could properly adjust them.

 

“Excellent: you look like you’d fit in quite swimmingly at the space mall,” quipped Pidge, sending the photographs to her cloud. She projected her favorite one onto a holoscreen, sending it to the stove so that Hunk could see.

 

He snorted, tossing the space vegetables into the stewpot, stirring the mixture a few times before dipping in a sample spoon.

 

“Would you mind sending that to Lance? He’d get a kick out of it,” Hunk replied, smacking his lips as he swirled the soup around in his mouth. “Where is he, anyway?”

 

“Probably exfoliating in his room,” Keith replied without missing a beat, sweeping the sprouted tops of the tubers into the countertop incinerator. “He was complaining like crazy about his pores or something after we came back from Persephone.”

 

“It was probably the humidity,” Hunk reasoned. “I don’t know about you two, but I definitely needed a shower after being there in full armor all day.”

 

He waved the green paladin over, sample spoon outstretched.

 

“C’mere and taste test this for me, Pidge, n’ tell me if it needs more salt.”

 

She skimmed up some of the broth, palating it tentatively. Her eyes widened, and a smile crept its way to her cheeks.

 

“Oh my _god_ , Hunk, this is _so good_ ,” she replied, dipping the spoon back in for another sample. “It’s like my grandma’s fresh-baked onion challah in soup form.”

 

Hunk blinked. “What’s challah?”

 

“Isn’t that, like, a special Jewish bread or something?” added Keith. He squinted at Pidge then, tilting his head as if he were observing a particularly interesting painting.

 

“Wait a tic…are you Jewish?”

 

Pidge laughed. “What, do I not _look_ Jewish to you?” she teased, pressing her hands against her hips.

 

Keith flushed, lifting his hands in a placating gesture. “I wasn’t aware that ‘Jewish’ had a look—“

 

“Oh, don’t mind him, Pidge,” came a voice from the hallway. A pair of blue lion slippers peeked out over the threshold, announcing Lance’s arrival. 

He was dutifully filing his nails with an Altean emery board he’d ‘borrowed’ from Allura, the tan skin of his forearms peeking out from the sleeves of the luxurious robe. “Keith always does that eye-squinty staring thing when he’s thinking.”

 

“I—I do _not_!” retorted Keith, chewing at his lower lip as he raised the knife he’d been using to chop and pointed it at Lance.

 

Lance inspected his nails, the tiniest of smirks playing at his lips. “Do too, Mullet: you do it all the time when we’re sparring,” he said matter-of-factly, never sparing Keith a glance.

 

“That was _one time_ , and it was because you had an eyelash on your face and I thought it was a bug—“

 

As the two continued bickering, Pidge stuck the sample spoon into the sink, fishing out a bag of alien chips from her special drawer under the kitchen island. She perched herself up on the counter next to Hunk, wordlessly offering him the bag as soon as she’d pulled it open. The yellow paladin obliged, pinching a few of the crisps between his fingers.

 

“They’ve been in the same room for, what, ten seconds?” muttered Pidge, licking some of the salt off her fingers.

 

Hunk shrugged. “I guess they’re now both faster _and_ more entertaining than Netflix.”

 

Pidge chuckled, now only half-listening to Keith and Lance’s banter. “Can you imagine how that would go? I can see the headline now: ‘not even a giant flying castle spaceship populated by seven people and a bunch of mice has enough space to ensure that a metrosexual Cuban boy and his half-Korean, half-alien boyfriend from Texas aren’t incessantly bickering at all hours of the day.’”

 

The yellow paladin snorted, reaching for another chip. “Boyfriend?”

 

“Oh, just you wait,” Pidge muttered, tenting her fingers. “There’s no way that two people can fight as much as they do and _not_ have unresolved sexual tension. They’ll go from ‘Keith and Lance, neck and neck’ to ‘Keith and Lance, mouth to mou—‘“

 

“Oh my _god_ , Pidge, _stop_ ,” moaned Hunk, covering his face with his hands. She cackled, popping a few more of the crisps in her mouth as the two paladins in question continued to quarrel.

 

“I’m just calling it like I see it,” she clarified, shrugging in nonchalance.

 

Hunk peeked out from the spaces between his fingers, regarding the green paladin curiously. Something sparked in his eye, and Pidge could almost hear the gears working in his head.

 

“Keith and—and _Lance_?” he hissed, his eyes travelling between Pidge and the bickering pair. “ _Together_?”

 

The girl shrugged. “Yeah, why not? Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen to us out here.”

 

“You’ve got me there,” Hunk muttered, “But…I don’t know Keith nearly as well as I know Lance, but—I know Lance, and he doesn’t like Keith in that way. Trust me, we’d _all_ know if he liked Keith. The guy isn’t exactly subtle with his flirting.”

 

Pidge nodded, considering his words. “A fair assessment,” she muttered, rubbing her chin between her thumb and forefinger, her voice barely audible over the background arguing.

 

“What? Sorry, I can’t hear—“

 

Speaking of said background arguing…

 

“CAN YOU TWO KISS AND MAKE UP ALREADY?” she bellowed, whipping around to fix Keith and Lance with a scowl.

 

The pair suddenly froze and turned around to face her, fists still coiled tightly around the fronts of one another’s shirts. By the looks of it Keith was miffed, but Lance—as per usual—rolled with the punches, his mouth already well at work before his mind could catch up.

 

“What d’ you say, babe?” he crooned, wriggling his eyebrows as he got right up in the red paladin’s space. “Want a taste?”

 

Keith didn’t hesitate to push away Lance’s face with the palm of his hand (gently, albeit firmly), rolling his eyes as the blue paladin squawked in indignation.

 

“I’d literally rather be farted out of a weblum again,” he retorted, returning behind the counter to resume chopping up the Kelunger tubers.

 

Lance gave a dramatic sigh, planting a hand on his hip. “Fine: suit yourself, Keithey boy,” he declared, smoothing out his hair. “Just so you know, though: not everyone gets a chance at a piece of _this_.”

 

He gestured to his own face, offering all three of his peers a wink (and pointedly ignoring Keith’s muttered remark of “I have yet to see anyone ask”) before sauntering back through the door.

 

“I’d stick around, but I’ve got important business to attend to,” he announced, turning the corner. “Later, peeps.”

 

As soon as they were sure he was out of earshot, Hunk let out a long, confused whine.

 

Pidge squinted, glancing at Hunk before turning to Keith (who had become quite focused on finishing the rest of his task).

 

“…are you two _dating_?”

 

Keith stiffened, the rhythmic sound of his chopping knocked only slightly off-course. “If we are, then it’s news to me,” he replied, almost off-handedly as he slid the space-vegetables off of the blade with his finger.

 

“Then what was— _that_?”

 

Keith shrugged. “Lance’s most recent attempts at getting a rise out of me,” he muttered, not looking up from his work.

 

“Yeah, well, _obviously_ ,” muttered Pidge, tapping her foot against the cabinets. “I was talking about—wait, attempts? As in, like, _plural_ attempts?”

 

The red paladin shrugged again. “Lance isn’t very creative with his annoyance strategies: right now it’s a pretty even mix between insults, flirting, and memes.”

 

Hunk snorted, his giggling only slightly muffled as he slapped his hand over his mouth. Pidge, on the other hand, just continued to stare at Keith, tilting her head slightly. Was this the same guy that had singlehandedly taken on Zarkon, held King Lubos at swordpoint and nearly destroyed the training room after Shiro had disappeared?

 

“And…you’re okay with that?”

 

Keith allowed his lips to quirk up into the barest hints of a smile as he dumped the contents of the cutting board into the soup pot.

 

“Why wouldn’t I be? Lance is my friend.”

 

“You were literally about to _throttle each other_ less than three minutes ago because Lance thought that you squint too much!” Pidge exclaimed exasperatedly, throwing her hands up into the air, “so excuse me if I think that it’s just a little bit weird that you don’t seem even remotely bothered when he hits on you.”

 

Keith’s small smile promptly disappeared, morphing into a flat scowl. “In case you haven’t noticed, Pidge, Lance flirts with _literally everyone_. Why is it so weird to you that I turn him down just like everyone else does?”

 

Hunk raised a hand, as if he were asking for permission to speak. “What I think Pidge means is that –well…given how you two _usually_ interact, she expected that you turning Lance down would be, I don’t know, more… _passionate_?”

 

Pidge pinched the bridge of her nose, rolling her eyes as she muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘dumb gay boys’.

 

Keith blinked, taking a moment to process the words.

 

“ _Passionate_.”

 

“Yeah, man! I mean, like, instead of ‘I would rather pass through a giant planet-eating worm’s digestive tract than make out with you’ all cool and chill-like, I thought you were gonna punch him in the nose or something! Or, I don’t know, at least act more surprised?!”

 

The red paladin groaned, running a hand through his hair. “I’m a bit past the ‘punch your crush in the nose because you can’t get over your own internalized homophobia’ stage of my life, Hunk.”

 

He froze, eyes widening as he realized what he had just said.

 

“Figuratively speaking,” he added hastily, shoving both of his hands in his pockets. Pidge and Hunk looked at one another, a silent conversation buzzing between their eyes.

 

“No, c’mon, _guys_ —I don’t—“

 

“Keith has a _cruuuuush~_ ” Hunk sang, his eyebrows wiggling animatedly beneath the lenses of the goggles as Pidge let out an impressive wolf whistle. The tips of their tormentee’s ears immediately acquired a slight pink tinge, and within a few seconds the blush had spread to his neck and cheeks. He bit his lip, folding his arms tightly against his chest as Pidge and Hunk continued to cackle at his expense.

 

“I do _not_ ,” he insisted, stoic as ever as he glared at both of his friends. Pidge considered him for a moment: he was a terrible liar, and by all accounts he seemed more annoyed than flustered—well, except for the abrupt change in his complexion…

 

Then it hit her.

 

“ _Hunk_ ,” she hissed, pointing frantically at her ear and cupping her hand once she knew she had his attention. As soon as he stooped down Pidge went into action, jamming the side of her hand against his cheek as she relayed her findings.

 

The yellow paladin nodded once. Twice.

 

“Oh.”

 

Satisfied at her handiwork, Pidge tucked her arms behind her back and smiled, Hunk mirroring her not long after. Keith’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the two of them, and Pidge made a mental note to tell Lance that he was right about the squinty thing.

 

“What are you two planning?” he asked, almost as if he was afraid of the answer. “I know you had something to do with turning Shiro’s arm into a jukebox, so don’t even think about lying to me.”

 

“ _Relax_ , Keith,” assured Pidge, waving a hand in mock surrender. “I was just telling Hunk that there was no possible way that you could be lying right now, so you’re off the hook. The rumor mill will not have grain to grind today, I’m afraid.”

 

The red paladin remained suspicious, but seemed to have resigned himself to the green and yellow paladins’ meddlings when he rolled his eyes. “Terribly sorry to have ruined your entertainment for the evening, then,” he quipped, rinsing off the knife under the sink. “Now do you need anymore space vegetables chopped, or can I go take my pre-dinner nap?”

 

“Go nap!” Pidge encouraged, shooing him out of the kitchen with a light gesture. “Hunk n’ I will finish up in here.”

 

“Yeah, thanks for your help, man,” added Hunk, beaming. “We wouldnt’ve had dinner ready until tomorrow morning had it not been for your chopping skills.”

 

Keith’s ghost of a smile made another all-too-brief appearance as he placed the now-clean knife back into the block. “Glad that I could help,” he replied, scratching the back of his neck, “But I mean it: whatever scheme you two were conniving just now? Not happening.”

 

Pidge chuckled, offering her friend a shit-eating grin.

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, _Keithey-boy_.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Pidge replaced the cap on the soup pot and turned the stove down to a low simmer, reaching to one of the cabinets above her to grab some bowls.

 

“Of course not: body language isn’t an exact science. All I know is that his posture was saying one thing and the fact that his face looked like a tomato was saying another. There’s no algorithm I could run to postulate anything even remotely conclusive, but I’m telling you, there’s something there.”

 

Ever since Keith’s departure the green and yellow paladins had been discussing the finer points of Pidge’s most recent observations. As always, she’d utilized a more analytical lens to pick apart the evidence, and Hunk had inevitably assumed the role of devil’s advocate some time between pulling the space casserole out of the oven and wrapping the silverware into napkin bundles.

 

“Pidge, you know that’s not what I meant by ‘sure,’” Hunk chuckled. “Science doesn’t mean much when it comes to matters of the heart. I was asking if you were sure that your gut was telling you something and, based on what you’re telling me, it sounds like you are.”

 

“I _know_ , Hunk, but there’s a valid, quantifiable reason behind why I had a ‘gut feeling!’ We’ve evolved as a species both physically and psychologically to pick up on even the finer nuances of peer behavior: it’s how our ancestors survived long enough to form complex languages and societies!”

 

Hunk smiled almost wistfully: he’d long since figured out that conversing with the daughter of an expert in extraterrestrial science and a world-renown anthropologist oftentimes lead to the formation of more questions than answers, but the banter was always a welcome distraction from some of the more menial kitchen tasks.

 

“What are you even smiling about over there, dude?”

 

Pidge had a hand on her hip, the other waving about to catch her friend’s attention. “Oh, don’t mind me,” he chuckled, waving a hand dismissively. “I guess it’s just a little bit satisfying to see you struggle with something that doesn’t require a Ph.D. to understand.”

 

She huffed. “I’m struggling with it because there is no evidence to support my conclusion! There is literally nothing to suggest that Keith has a crush and just doesn’t know it yet! You know how unreliable self-reporting is, too, so it’s not like we could just _ask_ him—“

 

“ _Pidge.”_

_“What?!”_

Hunk took a deep breath, and a part of him ached at how distressed Pidge had become: her hair was even more unkempt than usual, and she was clearly pulling at the collar of her shirt to reach the stim object concealed beneath it.

 

“Is this topic…upsetting for you? I mean, it’s totally okay if it is, and we can always talk about something different if you want, but—if you don’t mind my asking…why does this have you so worked up?”

 

Pidge seemed to deflate slightly, running a hand through her wild bangs once she’d set the bowls down on the counter.

 

“A little,” she mumbled, slouching into the closest barstool. “It’s just that…I don’t get it. Body language stuff, and sometimes tone of voice? I know it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but sometimes I feel like I’m missing a part of the conversation because I can’t ‘read’ people, and then I just drive myself crazy trying to rationalize what every little gesture could mean. And then, like, you get what happened just now with Keith, and a part of your brain is telling you one thing and the logic is saying another, and it just becomes one giant headache and people end up thinking that you’re weird.”

 

Hunk’s eyebrows pinched together in concern as he mentally tracked the newfound information: she _had_ been serious when she’d asked whether Keith and Lance had been dating, and had seemed confused when their play-fighting had de-escalated into banter.

 

“Geez, Pidge, I’m sorry to hear that: it sucks when everyone else in the group seems to be in the loop about something, and then you end up feeling dumb for asking what seems obvious to everyone else. Before I was placed with you and Lance at the Garrison, I had to work with these other students in an engineering course. It took me _forever_ to learn the names of all of the different instruments we had to use, because back at my uncle’s auto body shop in Hawai’i everyone spoke pidgin and we had pidgin names for everything. People were really mean about it in my group, calling me ‘unprofessional’ when I said _da-sqwebit_ instead of Robertson head and stuff like that…I mean, I know it’s not quite the same thing as you, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that I sort of get it? Maybe. But I—I should have known better before making that Ph.D. comment earlier, so I’m really sorry.”

 

He paused, clearing his throat.

 

“And if it’s, uh, any consolation, you’ve never come across as weird to me, Pidge. I mean, you’re—you’re brilliant! You’re brilliant, and fun, and always seem to know what to do when the rest of us are out of ideas. And I’ll bet that when we get back to Earth and get a nice, big sample size, you’ll figure out that body language algorithm in, like, an hour, so…yeah.”

 

Hunk tentatively looked up, and was relieved to see the green paladin giving him a watery smile. She was definitely blushing from the praise, and doing her darndest to keep her grin from spreading any wider.

 

“My dude, flattery will get you everywhere,” she breathed, bouncing out of the seat to give her friend a hug. She buried her mop of auburn hair into his chest, sighing contentedly as he wrapped his arms around her, pretending for just a moment that she hadn’t left her weighted blanket back on her bed at the Garrison.

 

“Honestly, what did any of us chucklefucks do to deserve you?” she mumbled, her voice muffled by the material of Hunk’s shirt.

 

His chest rumbled as he laughed. “I think that Garrison Galley chicken nugget hack might have had something to do with it. Nothing but good karma coming out of that one.”

 

If it were possible Pidge’s hair was even more messy when they separated, laughing jovially at the mention of their favorite inside joke.

 

“All right, that’s enough moping from me,” she declared, rolling up her sleeves to her elbows. “Unless my eyes deceive me, it looks to be just about time for dinner.”

 

“Yes, of course! Everything should be hot enough and ready to go! Will you help me serve?”

 

Pidge nodded as she propped open the door that connected the kitchen to the dining room, waving at Allura and Coran as they took their seats.

 

“Of course.”

 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A/N : bluuuuuh writer’s block sucks and this scene gave me so much grief why can’t fanfic write itself
> 
>  
> 
> Hunk is canonically Samoan (rejoice!), but I’ve always HC’ed him as living in Hawai’i and working at his uncle’s auto body shop on the weekends and just being a total champ at working with stuff like that. Hawaiian Pidgin English is a sort of hybrid dialect that is used in some local communities, and usually involves using a mishmash of Chinese, English, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Tagalog words to describe certain things. The example I used was a Robertson head (a type of screwdriver bit that is square-shaped) being translated to _da-skwebit_ (the square bit). I just made this example up for the purposes of this fic, but I still wanted to convey that there was some barriers to Hunk being accepted and regarded as intelligent by his peers because he knew the tools by more colloquial names.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I _totally_ HC Pidge as neurodivergent (both clinically anxious and on the autism spectrum): she loves her numbers and structure (and her weighted blanket!), likes to stim (tapping/swinging her feet, fiddling with objects and generally keeping her hands and mind busy), sometimes struggles with sarcasm and reading body language, and finds herself over-thinking when a question doesn’t have an immediate answer. I have anxiety myself, so that stuff I’m pretty comfortable with writing, but the ASD stuff I’m less intimately familiar with, so let me know if something is glaringly inaccurate or if you’d like to see Pidge’s ASD represented in a certain way! I’m always open to suggestions :3
> 
>  
> 
> comments/kudos/bookmarks appreciated <3 thank you to all who have done so thus far! ]


	9. Year 2 (part 6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura wolf-whistles, Shiro blushes (a lot), and Keith says the word 'groin.'
> 
> (also known as the 'gratuitous amount of shallura fluff/angst' chapter)

**Year II (continued)**

**WARNINGS: Some PTSD stuff, mention of sleep paralysis, clinical description of a violent death.**

 

It had started with a touch.

 

To anyone else it might have seemed nondescript, but then again in Shiro’s eyes it was impossible for the Altean princess to do things in a way that was any less than extraordinary. She’d hoisted him up from the training room floor as if he’d weighed nothing, the muscles in her arms barely engaging beneath her skin as they brought all one hundred and ninety pounds of him back to his feet.

 

He vaguely remembered how the heat of her hands had made his flesh hand tingle and twitch; how he’d instinctively clutched her palm as her warmth had filled him to the brim, spilling over into the cold, unyielding metal of his prosthetic arm, filling it with the heat of energy and blood and _life_ —

 

He’d almost been grateful for the little musical intervention that he was sure Hunk and Pidge had played a role in orchestrating back in the training room: had it not been for the sudden and decidedly un-sexy blaring of the saxophone over the castle’s PA system, Shiro was sure that he would have done something stupid and impulsive and very not in line with the team dynamic they had developed over the past year and a half or so in space. Something like, say, reaching out to brush a strand of stray hair behind her ear, or running his fingers feather-light over her knuckles, or closing his eyes and leaning in for—

 

“Shiro?”

 

The black paladin snapped out of his daydream, the vast windows and gleaming metal of the ship’s central commend center shifting back into focus. The Altean princess—still steadfast at the center console and clad in her battlesuit—came into his peripheral view as he swiveled his head about, her voice guiding his sights.

 

“Ah, Princess,” he replied, back ramrod straight and face carefully neutral as he addressed her. “My apologies. What can I do for you?”

 

Allura’s face softened, though her eyebrows remained pinched together in consternation. “Shiro, when was the last time you slept?”

 

“Maybe 16 vargas ago?” he offered, rubbing the back of his neck. It had been more like 26, if he was converting vargas to hours correctly, but she didn’t need to know that.

 

She narrowed her eyes: as a diplomat Allura was no stranger to body language, and had picked up on the fact that the black paladin almost always rubbed his neck when he was lying more than a year ago.

 

“ _Shiro_ —“

 

“Okay, so…more than 16, but I’m fine, Princess,” he insisted, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “I was just—lost in thought for a moment.”

 

“What about?”

 

Shiro bit his lip: he couldn’t just as well tell her that he’d just been thinking about what it would be like to— _never mind_ —so he pulled something out of his ass, hoping and praying that she would believe him.

 

“I was thinking about our sparring match the other day,” he murmured, catching her eye again. It wasn’t _technically_ a lie. “Just…going through what I remember, thinking about how I could improve my technique so I last more than twenty-five ticks the next time Pidge begs for a demonstration.”

 

Allura smiled, leaning against the console and perching a hand on her hip. “On the contrary I thought you did quite well,” she replied, smirking. “Well, until Lance made that noise and interrupted your rhythm.”

 

Shiro quirked a brow. “What noise?”

 

“This one.”

 

The princess closed her eyes, rolling her tongue around in her mouth for a moment before she emitted a shrill wolf whistle that he would have sworn had come from Lance had he not witnessed the deed himself.

 

“Oh. _That_ noise.”

 

The black paladin felt a heat creep up his neck as he remembered pinning Allura down in the training room, straddling her waist and pressing the staff against her neck as she lay prone on the floor, her supple chest brushing his sternum with each breathy exhale—

 

“Is it a communication of some sort?” she asked, genuinely curious at his reaction. “Does it mean something?”

 

“Well…on Earth, or rather, in some communities on Earth, we call that a wolf whistle. It’s, uh…”

 

Oh _quiznak_ , how was he going to explain this?

 

“It’s, uh, it’s an exclamation, kind of like ‘Wow!’ or ‘Cool!,’ but more...”

 

Provocative? Rude? Suggestive? Lewd?

 

“…sexy?”

 

Fuck, _no_ , goddammit Shiro, literally _any word_ but sexy—

 

He cleared his throat: he’d at least _try_ to clear this up before catapulting himself into a black hole.

 

“Nope—sorry, not the right word—uh, a wolf whistle is basically an exclamation that someone makes when they see a, um, a _situation_ , or a person, that is suggestive. In a sexual way.”

 

“…oh.”

 

Allura flushed at the implication, her gaze flicking downward and away from Shiro’s scrutiny.

 

“It’s generally considered quite rude on our planet, and I was going to reprimand Lance for it, but before I knew it you’d pulled my arm behind my back and the match was over, and then the PA system went off—“

 

Shiro knew he was rambling, and could only stew in his own mortification as the words kept tumbling out of his mouth.  

 

“—and I really need to talk to Pidge about that, because something tells me that she had a hand in all of this, what with her being the one to request that we spar in the first place—“

 

“Shiro.”

 

He froze mid-gesture, forcing himself to breathe as he collected himself again, thinking vaguely that if his mother were here she’d be smiling and chuckling and shaking her head in that knowing way. He would have still denied it had she been there, but there was no mistaking that something about Allura had managed to worm its way past his stoic exterior and turn him to putty from the inside out.

 

The next time he looked up the princess had dismantled herself from the control console. She was closer, now: close enough to see how his eyes had sunken back into his skull; close enough to notice how his hair was not nearly as neat as it had been at dinner; close enough to register the momentary surprise in his eyes as she finally stopped about an arm’s length away. By the looks of it the poor man was barely awake, and what sleep he did manage to snag between drills and routines did not seem to be doing much for him.

 

“Shiro, is there something wrong?” she asked softly, her eyes meeting his for a moment before his gaze shifted out of focus once more, cold and vacant and distant. “Shiro?”

 

Her hand on his tethered him back to reality: he jolted back into full consciousness, eyes wide and fraught with confusion at Allura’s proximity; giving an involuntary shiver at the way she dragged her thumb into the peaks and valleys made by his knuckles and the spaces between his fingers.

 

“You are not sleeping well,” she murmured, her eyes and thumb following the curves and creases of Shiro’s flesh hand in a delicate dance.

 

Shiro’s eyelids fluttered, the hitch of his breath barely audible over the persistent pounding of his heart. Had he not been so tired he might have cared that she could probably feel his pulse fluttering beneath her fingers—an undeniable tell that her touch awakened something soft and burning and _wanting_ within him that hadn’t shown itself since long before the Kerberos mission—and he might have pulled away, hiding behind a veil of formality as he excused himself to a bed that had become as cold and hard as the board the Garrison agents had strapped him to upon his return to Earth, the sleep paralysis keeping his limbs locked in rigor and his mouth opened in a silent scream—

 

His shoulders slumped as he shuddered long and low, his fingers curling to squeeze Allura’s hand.

 

“I don’t think I’ve had a decent night of sleep in about a month,” he admitted, sighing deeply. “I—I thought it would start to get better after my arm was fixed up, but every time I close my eyes—“

 

He let his sentence trail off into silence: Allura didn’t need to know about all of the horrible memories he’d re-lived during the quietest hours of the morning.

 

Her touch—feather-light and as warm as a star—ghosted across his cheek, and Shiro felt his heart catch in his throat, leaning ever so slightly into her open palm as her thumb traced the contour of his cheekbone.

 

Letting himself have this—letting himself accept this comfort—was like a balm to his countenance: the furrow in his brow smoothed down to a soft crease, and the brittle tendrils of guilt that had seized and stiffened his joints began to wither away. He knew deep in his bones that a part of him would always be with her, and that another—the part that stayed with him; the piece of his soul that burned and rumbled in resonance with the black lion’s ever-present purr—felt satisfyingly whole and complete in her hand.

 

He closed his eyes, and this time the nightmares did not come.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Naturally, when Shiro is using Allura to demonstrate a particularly complicated takedown to the rest of the paladins not a week later, it happens again.

 

After their last mission on Persephone, it had become startlingly clear that some of the paladins lacked the close-range combat skills they needed to face Galra foot soldiers: the gathering they’d attended to celebrate the recent incorporation of the PERSEP-3 Federation of Planets into the Voltron Alliance had been spectacularly crashed by members of Prince Lotor’s specialized Galra operatives, who—despite being unable to carry weapons into the venue—had managed to take on and easily defeat each of the paladins in a matter of minutes. Had it not been for the red lion’s interference and Coran’s quick maneuvering, they were sure they would have been in the prince’s clutches by now. Of course, Shiro and Allura (both of whom had had more field experience facing Galra than the rest of the paladins) had scrambled to address the situation quite literally the morning after the incident, and had gone ahead and developed an entire close-combat curriculum within the span of a few hours.

 

“When you’re engaging a Galra close-range, you’re at a disadvantage from the beginning,” Shiro lectured, gesturing to Allura as she began to change her body’s shape and color to match that of a Galra. “Who can tell me why that is?”

 

“Height and strength advantage,” mumbled Pidge, picking at some of the dirt between her fingernails. “And keep your mouth shut, Lance: you don’t need to tell me that virtually everyone has a height and strength advantage over me.”

 

Hunk snorted at the blue paladin’s ensuing pout. “Their higher mass does slow them down a bit,” he added helpfully, patting his own belly. “Trust me: I would know.”

 

“All right, good Hunk, Pidge,” declared Allura, nodding at the contributing paladins. “What other aspects of Galra physiology could we potentially take advantage of in close-range combat?”

 

She looked at Keith, and soon the rest of the room’s occupants followed. He shifted uncomfortably under their scrutiny, scowling when none of them had the shame to look away.

 

“Yeah, expect the token half-Galra in the room to know _everything_ about a species they didn’t know they were even a member of until last year,” he muttered, folding his arms over his chest.

 

Lance laughed, playfully digging his elbow into Keith’s side with a smirk. “Well if full-blooded Galra are anything like you, I’ll bet that blasting that pop music you claim to hate so much would work.”

 

“All right, you’re on the right track there, Lance,” interrupted Shiro, cutting in before Keith could shoot a retort. “Most Galra have very sensitive hearing, so making loud and sudden noises or boxing their ears can work as an effective tactic.”

 

Lance seemed to pale at that, staring at Keith wide-eyed. “Dude, can you hear through the wall separating our rooms?”

 

“I’m on the _opposite end of the hall from you_ and can hear you when you sing in the shower, Lance,” deadpanned Pidge. “Why do you care so much, anyway?”

 

“Aaand we’re getting back on topic,” said Shiro cheerfully, gesturing up at Allura (who now towered about a foot and a half over him). “A Galra might have a height advantage, but their higher center of gravity and height make some areas more vulnerable and, in your cases, easier to strike and initiate takedowns. Those areas are—“

 

“Ankles, knees, and groin,” finished Keith, rolling his eyes as Lance snickered and muttered something to Hunk about how he’d pronounced the word ‘groin.’

 

“Precisely! Princess, if you will?”

 

She and Shiro faced one another, exchanging a brief look before Allura charged forward with a punch. The black paladin expertly spun out of her reach, doubling back to duck under a roundhouse kick and strike the supporting leg behind the knee. Allura fell onto her back, slapping the ground to release some of the shock of the fall, but before she could recover Shiro was kneeling over her, hands hovering above her temples.

 

“At this point you could do any number of things beyond boxing the ears,” Shiro lectured, demonstrating each blow with a gesture. “If the throat is left unprotected, you could strike there, or if the opponent has lost their helmet you could knee or elbow them in the face or gouge the eyes.”

 

“The objective at this point is to incapacitate one or more of your opponent’s senses so that you have the chance to escape or, if needed, dispatch them,” Allura continued, her voice startlingly neutral as she turned to face the rest of the paladins. “Galra have nine cervical vertebrae—more than your species’ seven—but the amount of torque required to break the neck and sever the spinal cord is not significantly different between humans and Galra.”

 

Hunk began chewing on a hangnail, fidgeting uncomfortably at the description. Sensing his unease, Pidge scooted to his side and wrapped a hand around his waist, briefly squeezing his midsection in a sign of quiet reassurance. By some incredible stroke of luck none of them had had to kill anyone or anything remotely humanoid during their extended mission aboard the castleship (most of the Galra belligerents they had faced in the field had been lifeless drones or unmanned fighter ships), but Lotor’s latest strategy of introducing live soldiers to the front lines had left them with very few options.

 

The room remained silent for a few more uncomfortable ticks before Lance piped up, eager to dispel the tension.

 

“So, Keith, my man, my buddy, if you don’t mind my asking…how many neck vertebrae do _you_ have?”

 

Pidge snorted, and a soft smile broke through the anxiety of Hunk’s visage as Keith squawked in indignation at the comment. Shiro shook his head, resigned to his team members’ antics (and, frankly, more than a little relieved that Lance’s humor had been enough to reduce the anxiety of the situation enough that Hunk didn’t look as uncomfortable anymore) as he regarded Allura.

 

She was sitting up now, concentrating on returning her body to its normal size and color, her eyes flicking up to meet Shiro’s when she sensed his attention. She seemed to understand his inner turmoil with only a glance, nodding sadly as she tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ear.

 

“I apologize,” she muttered, though with sincerity. “My last comment was…insensitive. I did not intend to make you or the other paladins uncomfortable.”

 

Shiro knelt in front of her, struggling to read her expression. She seemed torn, and rightfully so: after months of careful reconciliation with Keith and the members of the Blade of Marmora, he could only imagine how odd it must have been for her to completely switch gears again and be put into a position where maiming and killing Galra might soon be necessary. Of course, matters only became more complicated when he considered the Galra Empire’s role in Altea’s demise: Shiro may have spent a year in Galra captivity, but he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for she and Coran to lose nearly everything they had ever known at their hands.

 

“There is no need to apologize, princess,” he said softly. “Surely even Alteans struggle with balancing diplomacy and pragmatism at times.”

 

A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. “My father may or may not have jeopardized at least a few intraplanetary alliances during his time on the throne,” she chuckled. “Coran always tells me that I got my bluntness from him.”

 

Shiro’s eyes crinkled in the corners, and she felt herself grinning and blushing in return, doing her best to swallow down the fluttering sensation that erupted in her belly whenever she felt his eyes on her. Her smile became serious, however, when she glanced at the cadets: they were talking amongst one another about different tactics they could use to take down Galra opponents (and, by the looks of it, Lance was doing his best to make Keith say the word ‘groin’ again), but the air of unease had had yet to fully dissipate.

 

“I think they’re afraid,” said Shiro, considering each of the other paladins carefully. “All this time we’ve been fighting to preserve life, and now that it’s become evident that achieving our mission might require that we take life away…”

 

He trailed off, glancing back at the Altean princess as he bit his lip. It was left unspoken, but Shiro’s consternation left her with no doubt that he reserved a fear similar to that he suspected from the cadets. She’d seen his dreams; watched him cleave opponents in two with his enhanced arm; observed him dealing the final blow upon many a broken corpse in the gladiator ring, his body shaking with exhaustion and anguish as he was forced to carry out the empire’s bidding.

 

Before she could quite process the action Allura had maneuvered her hand to press gently atop his, the frigid metal of his artificial fingers a sharp bite against the warmth of her palm. For a moment she was brought back to that night on the observation deck; to her thumbs and eyes tracing the contours of his face, their breaths mingling together in the shortening space between their foreheads…

 

_I’M NEVER GONNA DANCE AGAIN_

_GUILTY FEET HAVE GOT NO RHYTHM_

 

Shiro jumped about a foot in the air, clutching his chest in surprise as the loudspeakers blasted to life on the training deck, loud enough to cause some of the items on the weapons rack to rattle with resonance to the beat of the music. Allura was overcome with déjà vu as the other paladins whipped around in an instant, recognition dawning on their faces as the familiar melody wafted through the air.

 

The blue paladin had started beaming from the first syllable, but upon seeing the Altean princess regard the black paladin with a strange combination of concern and curiosity he absolutely _lost it_.

 

Lance’s cackles rivaled the song’s volume over the speakers, his breath coming in short gasps as Shiro buried his face in his hands, trying in vain to mask his mortification. Even Keith had begun to sport a sliver of a smile as he’d noticed the blush creeping up the black paladin’s neck, allowing himself to chuckle as Shiro let out a low groan as _Careless Whisper’s_ token saxophone chorus began again.

 

“What is with this _stupid quiznakking song_ —always when— _wait_ _a tick_ …”

 

Hunk tugged on Pidge’s arm, giving her a significant look as realization started to dawn on their leader’s face.

 

“Oh, would you look at the time!” she exclaimed, activating the screen on her phone to sell the act. “Well, Hunk and I promised Coran that we’d help him with, uh, cleaning the healing pods, so—“

 

“Not so fast, you two.”

 

Oh, boy.


	10. Year 2 (part 7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge and Hunk clean some healing pods. Team Voltron goes on a diplomatic mission and, naturally, things go to shit real quick.

**Year II** (continued)

 

“Pidge, can you pass me a clean rag?”

 

The green paladin grumbled, reaching for the piece of cloth she’d been using to cushion her knee as she’d scrubbed the floor of the healing pod. She threw it at Hunk’s head, not bothering to look up as he squawked in surprise at the soft projectile, and continued to furiously work a particularly persistent scuff near the pod’s entrance.

 

“Sorry,” she muttered, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I feel like my neck is going to murder the rest of my spine of I move my head right now, so I’m just gonna stay like this.”

 

Hunk chuckled, pulling one of the strange Altean heating pads out of his back pocket to roll it toward his friend, where it landed against her calf and began to emit a glowing warmth at the contact. She gratefully took it, shoving the article down her shirt to nestle between her shoulder blades and the base of her neck.

 

“Thanks,” she muttered, shifting her back until the heating pad was in place. Between their rough training schedule and increasingly recent scuffles with the Galra, Hunk usually had at least one of the devices on him at all times to treat aches and sore muscles. Of course, Pidge’s horrible posture and Hunk’s clumsiness (due in part to his most recent growth spurt) meant that it got its fair share of use between the two of them.

 

“You look like you have a growth,” quipped the yellow paladin, hunching over to mimic the large lump that now appeared to be emerging out of the green paladin’s back.

 

“ _You’re_ a growth,” she retorted playfully, laughing under her breath as her arms proved too short to shove her friend to the side. “Besides, it looked _much_ worse when you had to stuff the thing down the back of your pants because Lance accidentally shot you in the ass with his bayard during training.”

 

Hunk gasped in feigned offense, planting his hands on his hips. “I’ll have you know that Kevin was a treasured temporary buttcheek, thank you very much.”

 

Pidge shook her head, wincing slightly as the muscles in her neck protested. “Honestly, I’m not sure whether to be more weirded out by the fact that you’re remembering that experience fondly or by the fact that you _let the person who shot you_ name the ensuing welt,” she muttered, still dutifully scrubbing away at the stain.

 

“His bayard was on safety! It was like a paintball pellet. Plus, in retrospect, even I can admit that the whole thing was hilarious. Trust me: when Lance gets married or whatever and I end up being his best man, that story will _definitely_ come up at the reception.”

 

The green paladin rolled her eyes, but couldn’t stifle a chuckle. “I’ll bet that the in-laws’ll love that.”

 

“Yeah, well, whoever they are, it won’t be me that’ll have to deal with them,” said Hunk slyly, tapping the side of his head with his forefinger. “Consider it a plot for revenge that will have been several feebs in the making upon its fruition.”

 

“You’d better hope he ends up with someone whose parents are still around, then,” lectured Pidge, slowly beginning to sit back in her heels to retrieve some cleaning fluid. “Either that, or hope that Keith’s alien mom crash lands into the castle-ship some time in the next decade.”

 

The yellow paladin snorted, shooting his friend a conniving smile. “You’re already calling it?”

 

The way he’d said it hardly sounded like a question, but Pidge forged ahead as if it had been. “Yeah, my dude! Weren’t you there when Lance _literally sat on Keith’s lap_ in the living room a few nights ago?”

 

“Well, I think the context warrants consideration! I mean, Lance got up to get water, Keith sat down, Lance came back, Keith refused to move—“

 

“And yeah, we all heard the ensuing squawk,” finished Pidge, “because Lance _literally sat_ on Keith’s di—“

 

_“Hunk! Pidge!”_

 

The intercoms rumbled to life as Coran’s familiar lilt filled the room.

 

“Yeeees, Coran my man?” asked Hunk, rummaging through one of his pockets to grab a homemade food goo protein bar. “What can we do for you today?”

 

 _“Allura has requested you and Pidge in the main control room,”_ he replied. A quiet scratching sound came into prominence in the background as the transmission ended—no doubt a result of the royal advisor stroking his moustache too close to the microphone.

 

“Should we be in uniform?”

 

_“Negative; this is just a debriefing before we arrive at our next location. We’ve received a transmission from the Qijitii over in the Andromeda-IV System requesting our presence, and—well, given what we know about Qijitii customs and social conduct—we’ll all need to go over some information before we land.”_

 

The paladins exchanged a glance: very few of their missions had entailed such meetings, especially because most of the alien races they had encountered—regardless of their customs—had been more preoccupied with not dying at the hands of the Galra than with any potentially offensive nuances the paladins may have unintentionally communicated.

 

“Roger that,” said Hunk, giving the pod he’d been cleaning a quick once-over before relinquishing the rag in his hand to a bucket of soapy water. “We’ll be up in a few ticks.”

 

Pidge got to her feet, wincing slightly as she rolled out her neck. The heating pad concealed beneath her shirt dropped to the floor, rolling a few meters in Hunk’s direction before coming to rest at his feet.

 

“Ah, crap,” she muttered, but nevertheless smiled when her friend stooped down to pick it up and offer it back. She gratefully pressed it back against her neck, the throb once more subsiding to a dull ache.

 

“Thanks,” she offered, meeting Hunk at the door. “So what do you think it’ll be this time? No blinking in threes, or pronouns that vary based on the length of the individual’s earlobes?”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Qijitii can _what_?!”

 

Allura sighed, running her hands through her silvery hair as the younger paladins whispered excitedly among themselves.

 

“Yes, Lance: much like Alteans, the Qijitii are shape-shifters. If I recall correctly, they are even more adept at modifying their appearance than Alteans are,” she continued, summoning a series of images onto the holo-screen. Shiro squinted: in their native form they appeared more or less human, albeit with rather large eyes and heads and what appeared to be the remnants of webbing between their six fingers on each hand.

 

“If my records and the broadcasts are accurate, then Qijitii still follow a monarchy of sorts,” Allura explained further, flipping through the images. “Members of the Royal Family possess one of three distinct morphologies, and are the only members of the species that are capable of reproducing. The rest of the populace is sterile and functions to maintain the safety and integrity of the nest.”

 

“So…sort of like bees, then? Or ants?” asked Pidge, scratching her head. Allura squinted, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, my bad…ants and bees are organisms on Earth that seem to have a similar social structure.”

 

“So where does the rest of the population come from, then?” inquired Keith. He had half a mind to think that one of the queens in the Qijitii royal family was a massive humanoid that laid eggs all day, but the concept just seemed too absurd. Besides, if other members of the royal family were the only fertile entities… nope, okay, _not_ going there.

 

“The three morphologies of the Qijitii Royal Court exhibit different pre-and post-zygotic compatibility indices,” explained Coran, summoning a different image to the holo-screen. “Qijitii can shape-shift at even the cellular level, but because the known sentient species of the universe vary so much in their biology, they’ve evolved three primary forms to suit the three general categorizations of known life.”

 

Pidge grimaced. “So the workers result from matings between Qijitii and other alien species.”

 

“Yes, particularly those with high fecundity,” answered Allura. “Members of the Qijitii Court can produce both ‘male’ and ‘female’ gametes, so they can perform either reproductive function as needed.”

 

“Geez, talk about taking xenophilia to a whole new level,” muttered Lance, giving Shiro a suggestive look, wriggling his eyebrows as he glanced between the black paladin and the Altean princess. “So does that mean that inter-species relationships are pretty common in the known universe?”

 

Shiro’s ensuing blanch, however, remained relatively unnoticed: Coran laughed knowingly, then proceeded to go into a story about how many of his colleagues in the Castle of Lions had been part Altean, and how the Alteans’ diplomatic natures and shape-shifting abilities had made such lineages possible. Hunk gestured toward Keith (who had folded his arms and taken particular interest in a scuff mark on the toe if his shoe), waving his fingers for emphasis. “ _Lance_ ,” he hissed, far too loudly to be considered a whisper, “Keith is _part Galra_.”

 

Lance pouted. “I knew that!” he muttered indignantly, inspecting his cuticles. “Forgive a guy for wanting to see his infallible leader blush every once in awhile.”

 

Pidge pulled at the string around her neck, fumbling for the piece of rubber shaped like an ‘8’ at the end. She met the princess’s kind eyes, sitting down beside her as the boys continued chattering.

 

“Just curious,” she began, glancing at Allura, “why are you giving us a debrief on the Qijitii before we land? Not that their biology isn’t fascinating, but we typically don’t go over this sort of thing.”

 

Allura did some fidgeting of her own, twirling a strand of her hair in her fingers. “The Qijitii are quite different in terms of the sociocultural structures and roles that we have encountered thus far,” she explained. “Coran and I thought it pertinent to give you all a little bit of context prior to our arrival.”

 

“What have the Qijitii requested of us?” Pidge asked, continuing to fidget with her stim. “Do they need protection from the Galra?”

 

“Well, it wasn’t so much that they requested us as we requested them,” she explained. “It seems that, in Altea’s absence, the Qijitii have filled the diplomatic niche this quadrant of the universe. In the past ten thousand years their influence has spread far and wide, and because the Qijitii are polyamorous they have no shortages in terms of the number of diplomatic marriages that they can arrange—“

 

“They have a lot of invested allies,” Pidge finished, rubbing her chin as she pulled up a map. “So this is major, then: if we can manage to get the Qijitii on our side, then we’d have a foot in the door for virtually every other planet this side of Gemma-14.”

 

“Precisely. Now, I intercepted a general transmission that was sent for all of the Type II Qijitii ambassadors. The second eldest, Rorix, is to choose another spouse soon, so a ball is going to be held in their honor so that they can establish a line of communication with their potential suitors. Finally, the Court will put the decision to a vote, and the proper arrangements will be made for a marriage.”

 

Pidge paled. “Wait a tick, just to clarify here: our role as paladins is to _observe_ the ritual, correct?”

 

Coran’s booming laugh resounded from behind her, startling the green paladin into a jump. “You needn’t worry, gentlelady!” he assured, patting her shoulder lightly. “We have informed the Court that our business with them exists strictly outside of the ties of marriage. Strategically speaking, the occasion as it presents is the best opportunity we have of getting the Qijitii and their allies on our side, as Selection ceremonies are the only non-crisis situations where everyone in the alliance gathers together.”

 

Lance emerged behind Coran, his eyes alight as he clamored around Keith to nudge into the conversation. “Wait, did you say ‘ceremony’? Does that mean that we get to, like, dress up? Get super fancy-schmancy?”

 

“Indeed it does!” said Allura, clapping her hands together, “Which brings us to our next order of business. Coran will escort the boys to the royal dressing chambers to select outfits, and I will take Pidge to my own quarters to do the same. That is, of course, unless any of the gentlemen would prefer a gown, or Pidge would be more comfortable in a suit?”

 

“Ordinarily I would consider your offer, but I don’t wear dresses without heels, and refuse to wear heels to a formal occasion unless I’ve broken them in first,” replied Lance, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Keith raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as Lance politely asked if he could try a few dresses next time—once he’d had a chance to fit himself for a new pair of shoes, of course.

 

“Oh, man, that one you stole from your sister would have been _perfect_ ,” gushed Hunk, motioning to his shoulders. “You know, the one with the light blue trim on the sleeves and the floor-length skirt?”

 

Lance sighed wistfully, wiping away an imaginary tear. “ _Fui tan hermoso en eso vestido_ ,” he murmured. “Laura got so mad at me when she figured out that I had packed it for the Garrison.”

 

“Yeah, I remember that phone call,” laughed Pidge, snickering as Lance paled slightly. “I didn’t take Spanish for that long, but there was no mistaking that she was going to kick your _culo_ when you got home.”

 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she blew out my phone’s speakers from screaming so loudly,” Lance admitted, somewhat sheepish. “She’d planned to wear it for a date and everything. Say, didn’t we try to get you to try that dress on at one point too, Pidge?”

 

“Tried and failed,” she replied flatly, though a smirk still curled at her lips. “Even so, I think I’ll peruse Allura’s dress collection for a bit; see if I find anything of my tastes. Got any green or purple, Princess?”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Pidge had ended up selecting a romper of sorts, content with the way the iridescent green fabric didn’t brush against her skin as she’d strutted up and down the raised platform in Allura’s closet. The cloth felt like silk beneath her fingers, swishing softly as she moved and throwing off a brilliant yellow-green shine when it shifted under the light. And, to top it all off, it had _pockets._

 

All in all, the Qijitii gathering had been more exciting and engaging than she’d anticipated: by chance she’d run into a small group of Olkari, who had easily initiated a conversation about how things were proceeding planet-side in the wake of Lubos’s still relatively recent abdication. She was pleased to hear that the friendly race was once again beginning to regain some sense of normalcy following the Galra occupation, and had begun to reach out and reestablish old trade alliances with their neighbors. She was almost disappointed to be summoned back to the main foyer to observe the ceremonial procession of the suitors not too long later, and lamented her loss of personal space as Shiro motioned for her to stand between Keith and Hunk in the cramped VIP box.

 

“Where _is_ the Qijitii Court, anyway?” she muttered, eyeing the trio of empty chairs in the center of the hall. “Is punctuality just an Earth thing, or do you think they’re having technical difficulties back there?”

 

Hunk sniggered, nudging Pidge lightly in the shoulder. “Just remember: it’s impossible to be late to your own party,” he quipped, offering her a wink.

 

“Yeah, well if Their Royal Highness Borax or whatever their name is is any ‘not-later’ I might have to excuse myself from this shindig a little ‘not-early.’”

 

Even Keith had to chuckle at that, focused as he was on scanning the crowd for potential enemies: they’d been assured that an event of this size would be thoroughly and regularly scanned for potential threats, but at this point the red paladin was growing restless.

 

“I’m with you, Pidge,” he concurred, scratching at the collar of his fetching button-up as he fiddled with a piece of fabric tapering down from the collarbone that Pidge could only assume was the Altean equivalent of a necktie. “Does anyone know when they’ll get here?”

 

Suddenly, as if on cue, the music around them picked up in volume, and the people around them began to raise their hands and shake them silently as the tempo increased. An orange alien percussionist lay a beat into a drum that was perhaps four times their size as their silvery gray partner fingered a tune on what looked like a semi-transparent cross between a tuba and a trumpet. All side conversations ceased, and attention fell to the center of the room where the royal thrones remained unoccupied.

 

A tall, particularly skinny Qijitii enrobed in red emerged from a veil in the wall, a series of small, spherical robots hovering around their head. They cleared their throat, waving a hand idly to command the robots into a diamond. A holographic screen stretched between them, flickering to life as a series of transparent symbols zoomed across it. Pidge leaned forward in her seat, nearly tripping over herself to inspect the bots the best she could from the stands.

 

“Announcing Their Royal Highnesses: Alphe Gredel, Bete Carrén, and Geme Rorix.”

 

Three more figures emerged, which yielded another round of ‘applause’ from the audience. The paladins shifted in their seats, glancing amongst one another at the sight that beheld them: just as the ship’s images had shown, the Qijitii royalty were more or less humanoid in form (save for their lather large eyes and six webbed fingers), their nearly translucent white skin stretched across their limbs to reveal the faint outlines and colors of their internal organs, including (perhaps most unsettlingly) the bright purple bones in the face that extended into inky black teeth. Save for the capes they wore about their shoulders the Qijitii appeared more or less identical in appearance upon their initial introduction to the crowd but, as their eyes began to scan the people around them, the paladins noticed how their features would change: a glance at a Balmeran, and a portion of Gredel’s arm began to enlarge and solidify; a quick glimpse at an Arusian and Carrén’s skin had become a mustard yellow about their ears and neck.

 

The Qijitii Court took their seats, their faces remaining impassive as some members of the crowd arranged wordlessly into a line down the foyer’s main aisle, the movements so automatic and coordinated that they seemed choreographed.

 

Then, the Presentations had begun.

 

The Qijitii accompanied by the robots announced each name and title as the suitors approached the platform before the Court, curtseying before turning heel (or tentacle, or fin, or some other alien limb) and returning to the main floor. The entire process reminded Pidge of a couture runway show back on Earth, especially because all of the suitors were dressed in what she could only assume was royal attire. Had the situation not been laden with such an air of formality she might have laughed at how blatantly ostentatious some of the outfits were.

 

Perhaps the most amusing aspects of the ceremony, however, were the ways the Qijitii royalty would begin to morph and change as they were approached by each of the suitors: one moment Rorix would have the beginnings of a pair of horns spiraling out of their forehead, and another their skin would be pink and scaly. Rorix’s kin would also morph accordingly, though their transformations did not reach the level of detail and completion that the Geme Qujitii’s did.

 

“Holy cheese, I feel like I’m watching a magic show,” muttered Lance under his breath as he idly fiddled with his cufflinks. He turned to Coran, covering his mouth as he addressed the royal advisor.

 

“Are the transformations intentional like with Alteans, or can they not help it?” His eyebrows were pinched together in curiosity, eyes never leaving the Presentation stage.

 

“From what we know of them, the Qijitii’s shape-shifting abilities are largely involuntary,” Coran supplied, his voice barely audible over the procession music. “Their bodies seem to be extremely receptive to sensory cues given off by other species, including sight, smell, and even touch. Some Alteans claimed that the Qijitii would assume Altean features if they heard traditional erukeht music. Quite fascinating, really.”

 

Lance had heard erukeht music on a chance journey to the castle’s audio archives a few months ago: they were somewhat equivalent to Earth’s operas, each with its own incredibly complicated story line and cast of dozens of characters (many of whom had the same name). He highly doubted that something like music alone could cause a Qijitii to change, but they’d observed stranger things than that thus far during their time in space.

 

Keith piped up: it seemed that curiosity had gotten the better of him as well.

 

“So how are they going to select a suitor? Based on what we’ve seen so far there doesn’t seem to be a universal standard of attractiveness.”

 

“Yeah, well maybe the Qijitii aren’t that _shallow_ , Keith,” retorted Lance, a smug smirk curling his lip.

 

The red paladin rolled his eyes. “I only mention it because, if you had been paying attention _at all_ , you would have noticed that the completeness of Rorix’s transformation varies for each suitor.”

 

To Lance’s horror, Keith was right: Rorix’s skin was barely pink as a gelatinous red alien approached them, but shifted to almost black and even began to change in height when a dark, fox-like creature approached them next.

 

“Ooh, they liked the Abynesian,” said Coran, and his tone reminded Lance suspiciously of his sisters and father discussing players’ techniques during a _fútbol_ game. The blue paladin pouted, stuffing his hands into his pockets and mocking Keith quietly under his breath.

 

Pidge adjusted her glasses, chancing a peek at the rest of the queue. She sighed in relief: as interesting as the ceremony had been, she was glad that there were maybe a dozen suitors left.

 

Before she knew it they had arrived at their last Presentation: a beautiful, three-legged humanoid with silver skin and hair that seemed to billow like green fire from atop their head. They were rather young—perhaps no older than Shiro or Allura—and had no accompaniment to speak of: there had been over a hundred suitors presented, each with two or more escorts, but the individual (“a Yllre,” murmured Coran, his voice alight with awe) was alone, perching precariously atop their platformed sandals.

 

They began their journey down the aisle, stepping forward with confidence and swagger: murmurs erupted in the crowd, eliciting a cacophonous buzz of strange languages, and as they approached the podium, something slithered beneath the carpet, raising it at the last moment possible, and the Yllre was falling, falling—

 

They collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap, a sharp cry barely muffled under a bitten lip as they attempted to regain their footing, trying in vain to recuperate from this terrible blunder, but alas, the fragile platforms of two of their sandals had snapped, and there was no way they would be able to address the Qijitii Royals at this rate.

 

Before Allura could stop him, Shiro had hopped the balcony and was at the Yllre’s side, offering them the diadem that had disentagled from their hair during the fall and helping them to their feet, offering them his human arm for support as he walked them the rest of the way.

 

“Emperor Ky of the Yllre,” announced the usher, and the robots immediately reconfigured into a cloud above the red-clad Qijitii’s head, “accompanied by…?”

 

Shiro flushed, suppressing a cough. “T-Takashi Shirogane,” he stuttered, bowing lightly, “of Earth.”

 

For the first time during the entire procession Rorix rose from their seat, stepping forward to address the pair. As they came closer and closer, their skin became a soft brown—a shade between Hunk and Allura’s skintones—and their hair became tight and curled atop their head. A dash of freckles appeared on their cheeks, framing their eyes—a piercing golden brown—and beneath the sleeves of their robe Shiro could make out neatly manicured nails. He blinked—once, twice—and the Qijitii’s extra pinkie seemed to disappear.

 

“ _Madre dios_ ,” muttered Lance, whistling lowly to himself: Rorix was a _looker_ and, had he known any better, just as human as himself.

 

Coran and Allura, on the other hand, seemed to be having a much more difficult time processing the scene before them: Coran was pinching the bridge of his nose, muttering a swear so distinctly Altean under his breath that the universal translators in all of the paladins’ ears failed to decipher it, while Allura looked as if she had just swallowed a lump of uncured scaultrite.

 

“Gredel, Carrén,” said Rorix, their eyes never leaving Shiro’s. Their voice was like honey, dripping thick with insinuation and desire. “I have made my selection.”

 

Allura shot up like a rocket, the fabric of her gown stretching and pulling as she grew a few inches in height—tall enough to be well seen over the crowd. Coran opened his mouth, but the princess’s deadly glare shut her advisor down in a nanosecond.

 

“Your Highness, forgive me, but I believe that there has been a misunderstanding,” she blurted, her voice carrying over the hushed whispers and murmurs of the crowd. Shiro whipped around, his eyes aglow with panic.

 

Rorix’s eyes—warm, gold, piercing—flicked over to meet the Allura’s. “Altean,” they declared, and for half a moment she could have sworn she’d seen a pair of glowing yellow scales beneath the Qijitii’s eyes. “Pray tell, what is the nature of this ‘misunderstanding’?”

 

Allura glanced at Shiro for half a second, biting her lip. She needed him to trust her; to play along as best he could. He seemed to understand, giving her the tiniest of nods from across the room.

 

“Takashi is already spoken for,” she said simply, raising a hand to her chest. “After we take down Prince Lotor and defeat the last of the threats posed by the Galra Empire, he and I are to marry.”

 

 

\- - - - - - -

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /// blares air horns ///
> 
> SHALLURA IS FAKE BETROTHED WHADDUP \O/


	11. Year 2 (part 8)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro and Allura are fake-engaged, Coran is pissed, Keith and Pidge are fed up with their cumbersome Altean garments, and Lance is definitely not straight. [definitely some klance in this chapter] .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [WARNINGS: some references of forced marriage.
> 
> Also, in regard to the recent discourse involving shallura and canon ages: ugh. Like, super ugh. I’m really disappointed at how it’s being handled, especially because Allura always coded as an adult for me (I’m a teacher and approaching my mid-20s, and see a marked difference in how the younger paladins act in comparison to Allura in terms of emotional maturity, leadership roles, and so on) and we STILL don’t have precise ages. Like, to me, hidge is okay because they’re just a hair over two years apart and both are under the age of 18 (assuming that Pidge just turned 15 and Hunk is 17, and even that we’re not quite sure of), but having Allura classified as a “teenager” is opening up a whole new can of worms, because “teenager” can mean anything from 13 to 19, and even 19 seems a bit young to be dating someone who is 25. Anyway, I feel kinda gross liking shallura now because of the skeevy implications and such, so I’m still figuring out exactly what to do with regard to this fic. I don’t want to be a part of the problem, but at the same time I don’t want to compromise my enjoyment of something because of an assumption. 
> 
> I’ll finish up this little shallura arc for the sake of story flow (because tbh I dropped a pretty big shallura bomb last chapter that I can’t just glance over), but probably won’t revisit their relationship in this fic again until we get some more concrete answers. Thanks for your support and understanding <3 ]

**Year II** (continued)

 

Things had been quite tense on their journey back to the castle.

 

Allura had been as calm and composed as ever leaving the reception with her crew, smiling and curtseying as various diplomats had come to congratulate she and Shiro on their ‘engagement.’ The black paladin had smiled along, trying not to wince as the princess squeezed his human hand a bit too tight, yanking him closer to her side every time he drifted more than a foot or two away. If anything, she was determined to sell this ruse and excuse herself, Coran, and the paladins from the event as quickly as possible.

 

Andromeda IV-beta’s two moons were well above the horizon by the time they managed to escape, trudging across the courtyard’s strangely teal grass on their way to a depot that would transport them to the shipyard where the Castle of Lions was currently docked. The ten-minute trip had been absolutely silent (save for the muffled elevator music that hummed over the bus pod’s PA system and the coughs and mutters of the vehicle’s occupants), punctuated only by the whooshing sound of the walkway deploying whenever the pod came to a stop.

 

Finally, they were at the door of the castle, Coran giving the rest of them a slightly reproachful look as he disengaged the ship’s cloaking and security devices, stepping through the door to let the rest of the castle’s inhabitants inside.

 

The _nanosecond_ that the last of the door’s locks had stopped clicking upon its closure, Coran had positively erupted.

 

“What the _quiznak_ were you thinking, Allura?!” he bellowed, loud enough to scare Pidge into hiding behind Keith. Hunk took a similar position behind Lance, a small whimper passing his lips.

 

In the almost two years they’d been travelling, the paladins had seen and done a lot of things they hadn’t thought possible: at this point they’d become quite accustomed to the unexpected, but nothing could have prepared them for the Altean royal advisor’s sudden outburst. Coran could be melodramatic, or disappointed, and had even managed to be more serious than usual on occasion, but he never— _never_ —got mad.

 

“Do you _realize_ what you’re risking by lying about this? If Rorix or anyone else in the Qijtii Court discovers that you and Shiro aren’t actually engaged, we could have an _intergalactic incident_ on our hands! The Qijitii and their allies could use something like this as grounds for declaring war against the Voltron Alliance!”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ speak to me as if I made this decision lightly!” Allura retorted, fists clenching tightly at her sides. “You know as well as I do that we need Shiro to form Voltron, and that we need Voltron to restore justice and peace to the planets affected by the Galra Empire! Shiro can’t pilot the black lion if he’s whisked away to some _quiznakking Qijitii breeding harem_!”

 

“We had a _pre-arranged agreement_ , Allura! We specifically and explicitly conveyed that the nature of our proposed alliance as non-nuptial!”

 

“Did the way that that—that _Geme_ was looking at Shiro seem even remotely non-nuptial to you?!” she cried, her eyes wild with panic. Some strands of hair that had been wrapped tightly in a bun atop her head had come loose, cascading down her forehead in errant wisps. She was positively frantic, and fast approaching the verge of tears.

 

Coran’s visage somewhat softened at his charge’s distress: he held his tongue, instead offering the princess a chance to continue.

 

“I-I’d hoped that the Qijitii Court had changed their ways in the last thousand decafeebs,” she muttered, hugging her arms to her chest. She turned to the paladins, addressing each of them with a significant look. Her eye contact with Shiro, however, did not last long.

 

“The Alteans rarely sought nuptial alliances with the Qijitii before because their laws and practices regarding courtship were so different from ours,” she explained. “Because their influence spreads so far, however, the Qijitii Court has no shortage of offers for marriage alliances from royalty across the universe, and as you can imagine they are quite used to getting what they want.”

 

Pidge sucked in a breath, clinging to Keith’s jacket.

 

“So they’re used to getting _who_ they want, too,” said Lance, his voice cracking as it lowered into a whisper. “Shiro couldn’t have refused, could he?”

 

Allura shook her head solemnly, biting her lip.

 

“To have rejected Rorix outright would have caused an absolute uproar,” Coran muttered, the furrow in his brow betraying his age. “Especially given the circumstances of the meeting: hopping the stands, rushing to assist an unaccompanied suitor—I’m surprised that we weren’t all thrown ou—“

 

“What kind of _fucked-up_ alien species bullies people into marriage?!” Keith interjected, fists clenched tight at his sides. “Are you—are you saying that that shape-shifting chucklefuck could have looked at _any one of us_ and decided that we were gonna be their quiznakking _baby daddy_!?”

 

“Keith, language!” hissed Shiro, squeezing the red paladin’s shoulder in warning. “I know that this wasn’t part of the plan, but we’re trying our best to work through—“

 

“NO, WE’RE NOT! _Why_ are we even aligning ourselves with these people!? Isn’t Voltron supposed to be all about freeing the universe from oppression?!”

 

Allura sighed, bowing her head. “I know that that this isn’t the answer that you were probably looking for, but it’s more complicated than that, Keith. The Alteans haven’t participated in politics in ten thousand feebs, and all of our archived information is egregiously outdated. As of yet we have very few people on our side in the grand scheme of things, and the reign of terror that Lotor has wrought isn’t helping our situation any. We need intel, and we need influence, and we can’t do that without substantial allyship.”

 

“But Keith’s right!” said Lance, unfolding his arms. “Politics or not, we can’t just let the Qijitii do whatever the hell they want! We’re supposed to be _saving_ people, not letting them get away with shady shit because there could be a benefit for us. Not everyone is gonna have some beautiful princess to sweep in and save them by claiming to be _engaged_.”

 

Allura’s cheek marks glowed, but she swallowed down her embarrassment. “Yes, well, as Coran so eloquently put it, now we have to deal with the consequences. If we’re found out, we could risk having more than just the Galra coming after us.”

 

“Yeah, um, actually…how are we going to pull this off?” asked Hunk, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

 

“You should probably begin by clarifying what being engaged means on Altea versus Earth,” suggested Pidge, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of her nose. “After that, you’ll need to come up with a plausible cover story: how you met, how you fell in love, who proposed to who, whether you’ve consummated, how many kids you plan on having —“

 

As she counted off the items on her fingers Shiro turned away, coughing loudly into his sleeve to conceal that blush that had begun to creep down his ears. As usual Pidge was being incredibly clinical about the entire thing, hardly blinking when Coran began tugging nervously at his moustache at the word ‘consummate.’ Allura was hardly any better, fiddling with the hem of her sleeve and becoming progressively more tense with each item.

 

“—and why you hid your ‘engagement’ from the rest of us, because I can guarantee that everyone in that room saw our reactions and knew that we were just as surprised as the rest of them—“

 

“Dude, how long have you been thinking about this?” asked Hunk, laughing nervously under his breath.

 

Pidge snorted. “You’re seeming to forget that I managed to sneak into the Garrison under a fake identity and disguised myself as a boy for three months. Besides, it’s been, what? Two hours since the whole thing went down? Plenty of time to come up with a good cover story. You know how much time I had to come up with a plausible explanation when Lance asked me why I never used the urinal in the little boy’s room? Four seconds, Hunk. _Four_.”

 

“I still can’t believe that I _peed_ in front of you, man,” mumbled Lance.

 

Pidge rolled her eyes, sighing deeply before she looked at Allura and Shiro.

 

“Look, you guys are adults. You look good together, you work well together, and you helped take down a dictator that had been in power for ten thousand years. Trust me: you can pull off being fake-engaged for a couple of days. Quintants. Whatever. Just get your story straight and gaze lovingly into one another’s eyes every once in awhile or something like that and you’ll be fine.”

 

Pidge kicked off her flats, stooping down to the floor to pick them up.

 

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go put on some pants, curl up with my laptop, and go to bed.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

She’d pulled on a pair of pajama pants the moment she’d entered her room, throwing her flats haphazardly into the corner for her to trip over in the morning. Removing the dress, however, was proving to be a little difficult.

 

Allura had helped her into the garment several hours before, and for the life of her Pidge couldn’t loosen the clasp that had held the dress against her bust for the better part of the night. The thing could have been a goddamned Rubix cube and it would have been easier to undo.

 

“Quiznak,” she muttered, shoving her hand beneath her bed to find her night slippers before exiting her room.

 

Pidge slapped her hand repeatedly on Keith’s door, groaning under her breath when she heard his footfalls slowly approach the threshold. “It’s me,” she said, stepping back as the automatic shutters slid open.

 

Keith appeared to be in a similar state of undress, his overcoat shed and thrown over the side of the chair by his desk.

 

“Can you help me with my dress?” she asked, turning around and holding the hair at the nape of her neck. “I can’t get out of the damn thing for the life of me.”

 

The red paladin laughed through his nose, fumbling with the set of complicated straps that met at the middle of her back. “What, are you gonna at least buy me dinner first?” he teased, undoing a particularly large and complicated knot.

 

“Quit that heterosexual nonsense,” she muttered, but couldn’t stifle a giggle when Keith snorted in return.

 

“Quit laughing, you’re making this difficult!” he teased, flicking her shoulder lightly.

 

“ _You’re_ difficult, Kogane.”

 

“Hold up, I’m almost done—“

 

“Hey guys—oh.”

 

From across the hall Lance peered out of his room, his hair neatly tucked into a towel turban and a layer of green slime on his face. His eyes were so wide and the hallway so dark that he looked positively ghoulish, and Pidge jumped in fright.

 

“ _Jesus_ , Lance,” she hissed, clutching at her chest. “Give a girl a warning, wouldya?”

 

“What the _quiznak_ are you doing?!” he shrieked, glancing between Keith’s and Pidge’s perplexed faces.

 

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Lance, get you _mind_ out of the gutter,” Keith growled, spinning the green paladin around by the shoulders. “Pidge asked for help with her dress. There’s, like, a gazillion knots back here. Go back to your goop routine and quit your yelling.”

 

“It’s not a ‘goop routine’,” he countered, mocking him with air quotes. “It’s a beauty regimen. Some people actually like to take care of themselves.”

 

“And Keith is helping _me_ take care of myself,” said Pidge, placing her hands on her hips. “Would you look at that! Looks like you two have something in common after all.”

 

“Aaaand we’re done,” said Keith, undoing the final knot on the dress. Pidge exhaled loudly, relieved to finally be free of the garment.

 

“Thanks, my dude,” she sighed, reaching behind her to pin the fabric closed so that the flaps wouldn’t fly open when she moved while using her other hand to activate the switch on her door. “ ‘Night.”

 

“Wait—“

 

But her door had already slid shut, Pidge disappearing behind it. Keith slumped, sighing as he scratched his shoulder.

 

“Typical Pidge for ya,” Lance muttered, chuckling under his breath as he inspected his fingernails. “What were you gonna ask her, anyway?”

 

The red paladin tensed for a moment, but sighed again before turning around.

 

“Dude, are those—“

 

“Yep.”

 

About twenty-five buttons ran up the center of Keith’s dress shirt, tracing the curvature of his spine from his neck to his tailbone. The first two or three at the bottom had become undone, but the others remained stubbornly fastened.

 

“I tried pulling it up over my head,” Keith mumbled, “but it got stuck and I nearly dislocated my shoulder again.”

 

Lance sniggered, sauntering over to poke his friend in the back. “I think Coran tried to get me to wear one of these…apparently I put it on backwards, though, so he kind of gave up on me. Need some help?”

 

“…I’d appreciate that, yes.”

 

“C’mere then.”

 

Keith shuffled back awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that he didn’t back himself into the wall.

 

“Dude, you’re so weird,” chuckled the blue paladin, his nimble fingers beginning their work on the first button at the base of his neck.

 

“Says the guy who wears food goo on his face.”

 

“It’s exfoliating! Besides, it’s not _technically_ food goo: Hunk helped me modify the formula. There’s other stuff in there, too.”

 

“Yeah, like weblum ass crystals?”

 

“Nah, dude: adding scaultrite makes a mean facial scrub, though. You can make toothpaste with it, too, but it tastes awful.”

 

“…you can’t be serious.”

 

Lance was at the seventh button, admiring a particularly cute mole between Keith’s spine and shoulder blade. He swallowed thickly, suppressing a shuddering gasp as his knuckles accidentally brushed against the warm, bare skin.

 

“Lance?”

 

“Yeah, um, sorry: thought I was gonna sneeze for a second,” he stuttered, clearing his throat.

 

“Oh, I hate it when that happens.”

 

Button number eight. Button number nine.

 

“So, um…Shiro and Allura, huh?”

 

Keith groaned, his back arching forward. The fabric on his right shoulder slid down, revealing the scar he’d received during the Trials of Marmora. Lance licked his lips.

 

“If they keep avoiding each other and being emotionally constipated they’re not going to convince _anyone_ at the Qijitii court that they’re engaged,” he huffed, grumbling in annoyance.

 

Button number twelve. Button number thirteen.

 

“Well you’ve got to admit that it was pretty quick thinking on Allura’s part,” replied Lance. “An impulsive, authority-defying guy such as yourself’s gotta appreciate that much, right?”

 

“Was that a complement or an insult?”

 

Button number fifteen.

 

“You tell me, Mullet.”

 

Keith turned his head to glare back at Lance, though the look had little venom to it.

 

“I do.”

 

“What?”

 

“I do. Appreciate it, I mean,” Keith replied, looking away. “Shiro spent the better part of a year as a Galra prisoner, and we still don’t quite know what happened to him when he went missing all those weeks after we defeated Zarkon. To be taken away again, and be _used_ like that no less—“

 

The red paladin shuddered, but Lance momentarily paused on button number eighteen to steady him with a gentle touch to the shoulders.

 

“No one is going to take Shiro away,” he murmured, as if he were comforting one of his younger siblings, though something about their interaction felt distinctly non-familial. “Allura won’t let that happen; not in a million years.”

 

Keith nodded solemnly, more in acknowledgment than agreement. “Do you—?”

 

“What?”

 

“Never mind.”

 

“Nah, man, ‘s okay. I’ve got a few buttons to go, so I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Keith gulped, blurting out the question before his judgment could get the better of him.

 

“Do you think that Allura has feelings for him?”

 

Lance’s fingers, having cramped painfully at the repeated action, fumbled on button number twenty-one. He chuckled—both at himself and the question—though Keith missed the endearing smile that curved the young man’s lip.

 

“Dude, if anyone ever looks at me with _half_ of the adoration that Allura does when she looks at Shiro, I’ll consider myself lucky.”

 

He undid the last button, tapping Keith’s back like he would the trunk of a car. “All done.”

 

The red paladin sighed, rolling his shoulders experimentally to test his regained mobility, while Lance tried very hard not to notice how the muscles rippled beneath his smooth, mole-freckled skin.

 

“Thanks,” he mumbled, shrugging his shoulders so that he could peel off the sleeves. Lance forced himself to turn around, ducking his head so that the towel turban came loose in his hands, wrapping it firmly around his neck and praying that the blush in his ears hadn’t spread to his chest.

 

“ _No problema, guapo_.”

 

_Fuck._

 

“…Did you just call me a grape?”

 

“Uh, yeah.” Let’s go with that. “Like, how grapes are purple, and you’re part Galra?”

 

“Good night, Lance.”

 

 

\- - - - - - -


	12. Year 2 (part 9)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The paladins chill in their PJs, Pidge and Keith gossip, Shiro and Allura talk weddings, and Pidge and Hunk do some high-tech snooping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost 1,000 hits, almost 100 kudos, and a collection of comments that have made me grin from ear to ear and squeal in happiness (!!!!!!) Thanks so much for reading and supporting this fic, everyone: it really means a lot that you take the time to show your appreciation <3 
> 
> ALSO: I have art for chapters 7,8, and 10 posted: they’re embedded in the story, so go check them out!
> 
> [WARNINGS: some nihilistic angst and a mention of ethnic cleansing.]

The paladins were surprisingly quiet the next morning as they supped on their food goo. Everyone—even Shiro, clad in a somewhat sheer nip slip and a pair of grey sweat pants—was in their pajamas, as they weren’t required at the Qijitii palace until their equivalent of noon. Apparently the species spent about two thirds of their lives sleeping and, when not involved in diplomatic affairs, were otherwise occupied with their spouses. Lance had wriggled his brows at the implication, but Shiro’s look of warning—weary as it was—had limited his response to a shared chuckle with Pidge. These aliens’ strange circadian biology seemed to be the only blessing out of this entire ordeal, but he still had a lot to go over with Coran and Allura before that afternoon.

 

Oh, boy. Yeah. That afternoon. Right.

 

“Something wrong, Shiro?”

 

Keith peeked over, the spork in his hand paused in mid-air halfway to his mouth.

 

“Nope,” he lied, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just…don’t have much of an appetite is all.”

 

“Well, you should probably eat _something_ ,” he replied, taking a bite of his own goo. “You’re still training with me after breakfast, right?”

 

Shiro sighed under his breath, glancing at the red paladin apologetically.

 

“I’m really sorry, Keith: I have to meet up with Coran and Allura to go over some things before the banquet. Before we leave we’ll also need to go over our cover story as a team so that everyone’s on the same page about the…engagement.”

 

The man swallowed, grimacing as what little he’d eaten churned in his stomach. Keith had expected as much: he’d managed to mask his anxiety quite well the day before, but something had happened in the last few vargas that clearly had Shiro spooked. Had the Alteans said something? Done something? Surely there wasn’t some sort of strange engagement ritual they’d needed to perform in order to keep their cover—

 

“You sure you’re okay? You’re looking a little green.”

 

Shiro ran his flesh hand down his face, sighing as he massaged his temple with a thumb and forefinger.

 

“It’s…complicated. I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

Hoo boy.

 

Keith pushed in his chair, grabbing his empty plate before nudging Shiro softly with his elbow. He spoke quietly, an undercurrent of understanding and sympathy to his voice.

 

“Fair enough. If you need anything, though, let me know, okay? I’m sure the Alteans can spare you for a ten minute spar before we have to get ready.”

 

He left for the kitchen without another word, pausing briefly to pick up Pidge’s empty plate on his way out. The green paladin crooked a brow as she glanced at Hunk, who gave her a questioning shrug in return. She attempted to get Lance’s attention, but he was busy painting his nails a soft, sparkly teal blue with some polish that Allura had lent him a few weeks ago.

 

Pidge shut her laptop, tucking it under her arm as she set a course for the kitchen.

 

“Keith!” she hissed, swiveling her head around as soon as the doors behind her had sealed. She found him at the sink, scraping some of the goo that had caked onto the plate into the tabletop incinerator.

 

“What’s up with Shiro? He looks like a kicked puppy.”

 

“Whatever it is, he isn’t telling me,” he grumbled, shoving the dish into the autoclave (Hunk had moved and modified one of the ones in the lab to act as a dishwasher, as the Alteans had no such equivalent in their kitchens). “I’ll eat my boot if it doesn’t have something to do with this whole fake engagement debacle, though.”

 

“Well I figured as much, given how much Coran freaked out about the whole thing last night,” she chuckled, placing her laptop on the counter so that she could help Keith load some of the rinsed utensils into the autoclave. “I don’t know why he’s so worried, though: he seemed to do fine last night at the ceremony after Allura dropped the e-bomb on Rorix.”

 

“Honestly, I think it’s the anticipation that’s getting to him at this point. Coran _definitely_ psyched him out, and lately Allura’s been making him…weird.”

 

Pidge raised her brows in interest, hiding a smirk as Keith’s face twisted into an indecipherable squint.

 

“ _Weird_?”

 

“Yeah! Like, it’s hard to describe, but he’s been super formal around her and stuff: almost like he’s afraid he’s going to come across as casual or friendly? Which is weird because he’s pretty chill with the rest of us and Coran—“

 

“Well she _is_ older than us, and a princess to boot. And she’s not a paladin.”

 

“I know, but there’s something else,” Keith continued, tapping his chin. “And I think that, whatever it is, it’s got to be the root of why this whole fake engagement thing has got him in such a funk.”

 

“Do you think it’s because he likes her?”

 

Keith was startled silent by the statement, obvious as it was: everyone had been in the training room on the occasions that Shiro and Allura had sparred together; seen the way he’d flushed when she’d pinned him to the floor. It wasn’t a secret that he fancied her, and although Keith wasn’t attracted to women he could see why Shiro was so taken by her: she was beautiful, and kind, and displayed a physical and mental fortitude that awed and inspired everyone around her.

 

But Keith _knew_ Shiro, and knew that all of the pieces didn’t quite add up. Something was still missing.

 

“I don’t think so. I mean, he definitely likes her, but there’s still something else. Otherwise I think he’d be more shy and embarrassed about the whole thing rather than drowning in angst and anxiety like he is now.”

 

He closed the autoclave door, rinsing his hands under the sink. “I’m not going to push him for answers, though: he’s under enough stress as it is at the moment, and it’s not really any of my business. He’ll figure it out eventually, but for now we just kind of have to roll with the punches and get through this banquet.”

 

“I hear you on that,” Pidge sighed, stretching her arms. “Ugh, I’m _not_ looking forward to this thing: I think I might sneak into your dressing room and grab some pants this time around. Have you chosen what you’re going to wear yet?”

 

Keith swallowed at the memory of Lance’s fingers grazing his back, his breath a balmy, comforting heat on the bare skin of his shoulder.

 

“I think I’ll go with another button-up.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“… and there’s also the _iel-far_ betrothal ceremony, where the spouses-to-be select their wedding sentinels, which is followed shortly by the _pahl-iyah_.”

 

“Pahl-eeah,” Shiro repeated slowly, testing the word on his tongue. “So what is that?”

 

Coran seemed to deflate slightly, almost as if he’d been expecting Shiro to look over the detail.

 

“It’s the extension of a wager regarding how quickly the couple conceives,” supplied Allura, speaking as if she were reciting ingredients in a cookbook rather than providing the details of an apparently intimate ritual. “Virtually all of the people involved in the wedding participate, and the individual with the closest guess reserves the honor of becoming the child’s namesake.”

 

Shiro stiffened: if the rest of the paladins got wind of that particular ritual, he’d _never_ see the end of it. He could already envision the blue paladin cackling at the prospect of him having to name his hypothetical son something ridiculous like ‘Lance Junior.’

 

“And what do the wedding sentinels do again?”

 

“They accompany the spouses-to-be to the wedding, and ensure that all of the rules and traditions are upheld. They are also present to defend the newlyweds should a dispute occur during the procession.”

 

“A _dispute_?”

 

“Why yes, of course!” said Coran, as if the concept excited him. “Weddings between individuals of high status can be _especially_ prickly, especially if alliances are being formed between families that do not get along. Why, at King Alfor and Queen Laxmi’s wedding—“

 

While Coran went on about how one of the Queen’s brothers had nearly beheaded Alfor’s sentinel during the ceremony, Allura sent Shiro an apologetic look.

 

“You’ll have to forgive him, Shiro,” she whispered, wincing as Coran stepped forward and thrust his arm out as if her were stabbing an enemy. “He was my mother’s sentinel at the wedding, and this was always one of his favorite stories to tell when we had other diplomats visiting from off-planet. Of course, at that point the tradition of having sentinels was becoming less and less popular, given that Altea had unified under one sovereign rule not too long before, so he was always very proud about having been one of the last ones in practice.”

 

“No, it’s fine,” he replied, steepling his fingers together as he watched Coran continue his reenactment. “Wedding sentinels are actually quite similar to a tradition that some cultures on Earth have: we call them the ‘best man,’ and while nowadays they’re mostly responsible for leading the groomsmen and planning the bachelor party, I guess they were originally hired by the groom to protect him during the wedding, lest the bride’s lover attempt to crash the wedding and steal her.”

 

Allura looked confused. “Aren’t the groom and the bride’s lover the same person?”

 

“…not always, no. Most marriages were arranged when the tradition was established, and in some parts on Earth they still are. In fact, my neighbors growing up were a lovely Indian couple that had been happily together for almost fifty years, and their marriage was arranged by their parents. Nowadays, though, where the paladins and I are from, most marriages are made out of love.”

 

He sighed, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I was actually a groomsman at my friend Korbin’s wedding shortly before I left for Kerberos: he and Lou have a beautiful little girl named Rose that they adopted from Louisiana. I held her while the grooms danced: I remember her spitting up all over my tux halfway through ‘Blue Moon.’”

 

Shiro chuckled to himself at the memory, while Allura did her best not to blush too terribly as she imagined the black paladin cradling a tiny human child to his chest, not really minding too terribly when she did what babies do. She could only guess what this ‘Blue Moon’ ritual entailed, but whatever it was sounded romantic.

 

“Have you ever attended a wedding, princess?”

 

Allura started, briefly taken aback by the glint of curiosity in the man’s eyes.

 

“Yes,” she managed to reply, sifting through her memories of the marriages she’d witnessed on Altea. “My mother had seven siblings, all of whom had children of marrying age when I was younger. I attended so many of my cousin’s weddings that, by the time I was ten feebs old, I probably could have coordinated one myself.”

 

“There was one, though, when I was perhaps twelve or thirteen feebs old, that had the entire palace scrambling: my cousin Lumira met one of Zarkon’s servants—a Galra named Kovac—during a diplomatic visit, and they fell in love instantly. Of course, they were none too careful, and conceived just after they announced their engagement, so not only did they have to plan a wedding in consideration of their cultural differences, but Lumira had to have a special wedding gown constructed to accommodate her belly. I remember thinking that she looked like a planet with arms and legs when Uncle Félin walked her through the wedding procession. And it was no wonder: she gave birth to twins barely four quintants later!”

 

Allura beamed, her smile only made more radiant by the way her cheek scales pulsed and glowed. Butterflies squirmed in the black paladin’s stomach, pressing insistently against his ribcage as her eyes crinkled at the corners in jubilance. Had Coran not been there he might have reached for her hand, brushing his fingers along her knuckles with feather-light touches and, if he were brave enough, a soft graze of his lips.

 

She was so _exquisite_ ; so perfect and pure and _whole_ —

 

And everything good that he wasn’t.

 

Shiro tucked his hands behind his back, drawing upon his resolve to wear a fake smile as the princess of a near-exterminated race reminisced about how the children of two parents doomed to enmity used to romp and play in her skirts.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

They entered the Qijitii ballroom just as the first of the planet’s suns disappeared beneath the horizon, and were met immediately by the familiar chatter of hundreds of aliens clicking, hooting, and beeping their ways through small conversation. Pidge had to cover her ears momentarily to accommodate to the noise, but the familiar weight and warmth of Hunk’s hand on her shoulder weakened her anxiety to a dull thrum before they each took their seats just moments later. She smiled appreciatively, crooking her finger to urge her friend closer.

 

“Guess what I brought?” she teased, fumbling through one of the pockets in the oversize coat she’d chosen to wear for the evening.

 

Hunk tilted his head in curiosity as she fished a device out of her pocket. He didn’t quite know what it was, however, until she initiated the program startup.

 

“ _Pidge_ ,” he hissed, looking around to make sure that none of the other attendees had seen it. “Why the heck did you bring an Olkari cube to the banquet?! Where did you even get it?”

 

“You’re saying that as if it’s a bomb or something!” Pidge retorted, already tracing the object’s familiar grooves with her fingers. “And if you must know I made it. The Olkari let me keep one of their nature channeling tiara things, so I’ve been fiddling around for the past few months to see what I can do.”

 

Hunk stared at her blankly. “Is that what you were up to while I was busy installing the autoclave in the kitchen? You said you were busy designing an air conditioning unit for your laptop because it kept overheating!”

 

“Well, I got that done, too: I wasn’t lying to you. But yes: after we went through all of the stuff we salvaged for Shiro’s arm, I got the idea to use some of the materials for a little project. Initially I’d planned on re-building Rover from scratch, but then I got a better idea.”

 

She fished another device out of her pocket, twirling it around so that Hunk could see the label.

 

“Is that the hard drive I made you for your birthday?”

 

“So many questions today! Of course it’s the hard drive you made me: of course, I made a few adjustments to sync up with the C.U.B.E. Up-up-up! Before you ask, this thing,” she said, gesturing to the other object in her hand, “is the C.U.B.E., or compact undercover bionic eavesdropper. It has the same cloaking technology as the green lion, and records video and audio and sends information directly to the hard drive. I installed an algorithm to filter out any information that didn’t match up the keywords I inputted early this morning, so we don’t end up with a digital copy of every single conversation that occurs in this room.”

 

The yellow paladin’s mouth dropped open, and Pidge swore she saw a sparkle in his eye when she plopped the C.U.B.E. into his open palm. He inspected it reverently, twirling the device every which way as he chuckled in awe.

 

“Holy crow, Pidge: you’ve _truly_ outdone yourself this time. This is—this is _amazing_! When we get back to the castle I’m gonna ask you a _zillion_ questions about it, you know that, right?”

 

The green paladin felt her cheeks warm as she fiddled with the fidget beneath her blouse. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, Hunk: I know you’re already conjuring up a more aerodynamic and energy-efficient model as we speak.”

 

“Oh, you’re giving me _waaay_ too much credit,” Hunk insisted, doing a fair amount of his own blushing. “I at least have to see how it works first. But I gotta ask: why did you make this, and why did you bring it here tonight?”

 

At that Pidge became decidedly more solemn, her mouth curling into a thin line. “I made it to collect data whenever we went on missions involving the Galra: base locations, infiltration plans, travel itineraries, and the like. Anything we could use to get an edge on Lotor. Before that, though, I made it to find any information I could on Matt and my dad, as well as the resistance movement that Matt is apparently a member of now. It’s a bit of a long shot, but if I deploy the C.U.B.E. frequently enough I think we’ll come back with something useful. After what happened yesterday, I figured that we should be on our guard about the Qijitii and their allies, so I made some finishing touches last night to the software and data filters. If anyone’s planning anything shady, the C.U.B.E. should pick it up.”

 

Hunk nodded. “I understand: we can’t be too careful here, especially after what went down last night. Is there anything I can do to help?”

 

“You can help me figure out a way to extend the damn thing’s battery life past twenty four and a half minutes so it doesn’t have to re-charge in my pocket for half the night. Maybe when we get back to the castle?”

 

The yellow paladin smiled, giving his friend a fist bump.

 

“I’ll see what I can do.”


	13. Year 2 (part 10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro is a smooth mofo, Keith is grumpy, and Hunk and Pidge put their time in cotillion to good use.

**Year II (continued)**

 

Shiro bristled.

 

He could feel hundreds of eyes on him, tracking his movements as he led Princess Allura by the arm to their dining table. They roamed in pairs, triplets, octets: dozens and dozens of them trained and focused on the scar that divided his face; on the exposed portion of his Galra arm poking through the sleeve of his borrowed Altean tunic. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, taking a deep breath to will the patch flat.

 

“Are you all right, Shiro?” the princess inquired, sliding her hand across the tablecloth until her fingers could tentatively wrap around his wrist. He caught himself flinching as her neatly manicured nails brushed against his pulse point.

 

The black paladin swallowed, threading his fingers between her own as he offered her a shy smile.

 

“Nervous,” he mumbled, chuckling low under his breath as Allura squeezed his palm. “I’m guessing that it’s not part of alien etiquette to be subtle when you’re staring?”

 

Before he could stop her Allura had glanced around, meeting several curious gazes during her cursory scan of the room. Shiro felt like hiding under the table as a few realized that they had been caught and looked away.

 

“Depends on the aliens,” she remarked, returning to face her paladin with a somewhat satisfied smirk. “I believe that the little uproar we caused last night has made us the talk of the tick. Suffice to say that we’ll be receiving a little more attention than usual over the next few quintants.”

 

Shiro felt her thumb stroking the side of his pointer finger, his breath hitching as it dipped between their joined palms and traced circles into its sensitive surface. The gesture was subtle, yet strangely intimate, and for a few moments he couldn’t will himself out of the trance long enough to give her a substantial reply.

 

So instead he ignored his inhibitions and brought her hand to his lips, pressing a feather-light kiss atop her knuckles.

 

“Let them stare, then,” he replied confidently, even as his insides crumpled in embarrassment. Allura chuckled, her cheek marks glowing softly in the low light.

 

“ _Damn_ , Shiro, you _smooth_ ,” remarked Lance, wriggling his eyebrows as he leaned across the table on his elbows. “Who knew you were such a ladies’ man?”

 

He turned to Keith, who had been silently sipping on a pale blue beverage since their arrival half a varga ago.

 

“Dude, are you catching _any_ of this?”

 

The red paladin’s face scrunched in distaste as he pulled the drink back from his lips. “Yeah, and I wish I wasn’t.”

 

Across the table Coran nearly choked on his appetizer, coughing loudly as he reached for a tall glass of water. Allura was on her feet in a flash, concern marring her countenance as she approached the Altean advisor’s side.

 

“Subtle,” Keith muttered, groaning under his breath as Shiro followed her not close behind, a hand hovering near the small of her back. “The guy’s like a friggin’ puppy.”

 

Lance chuckled, throwing his arm around the back of Keith’s chair. “Yeeeeah…something tells me that it isn’t just the mission that’s got him all touchy-feely, of you know what I mea—hey!”

 

Keith had reared his chair back on its hind legs, knocking Lance loose so abruptly that he nearly ended up in a heap on the floor.

 

“ _Jesus_ , Lance, I don’t need to hear you talking about someone I see as a sibling getting ‘touchy-feely’!” he hissed, folding his arms across his chest.

 

“Hey, man, I’m just telling you what I see in front of me!” Lance retorted. “Love is a beautiful thing!”

 

“I never said it wasn’t! I just don’t want to stumble in on them making out in a closet or something—“

 

“Who’s making out in a closet now?”

 

Keith groaned into his hands as Hunk appeared behind them, a massive hand on both of their shoulders as he poked his head between them. Cackling, Lance gestured his head at Shiro and Allura, who had since returned to their seats and resumed their conversation, both seemingly oblivious to the spying. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

 

“Allura and Shiro were sucking face in a closet?!” blurted Pidge, wriggling her way between Hunk and Lance’s heads. “Oh, your hair smells really nice, Lance.”

 

“Why thank you! I got the shampoo on that trade moon we visited a few months ago! And might I say you look quite fetching in those trousers?”

 

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she replied, nudging him with her shoulder. “So are you two gonna come dance with us? There’s already a few people on the floor, and the music’s pretty dope.”

 

The blue paladin practically shot out of his seat to turn around, following Pidge’s line of sight to the small congregation of aliens on what he presumed was a dance floor. A few Qijitii musicians (or, at least, he assumed hey were musicians) plucked and puffed away on some strange instruments to an arrhythmic, staccato beat, the dancers similarly disjointed in their pace and style.

 

“It’s like a cross between trap and jazz,” added Hunk, playing out the beat (oh, so it _did_ have a pattern) on his knees with his palms. “There don’t seem to be any rules with the dancing, either: I saw, like, half a dozen of the same type of alien doing something completely different just a minute ago—awww, come _on_ , Keith, don’t give me that face!”

 

If Keith had seemed disgruntled before he looked like he was going to explode if someone so much as nudged him out of his seat. “Nope. Not gonna happen, guys.”

 

Lance looked like he was about to cry. “But you _gotta_ , Keith! We can’t just go out with an _odd number_!”

 

“Ask Coran.”

 

“Nah, Coran’s clearing his windpipe and flirting with the waiter. You, on the other hand,” —Lance poked him in the shoulder, yielding a small growl—“ are not occupied at the moment.”

 

“I’m occupying this chair and _not moving_.”

 

Pidge grinned, adjusting her glasses. “Suit yourself, then. Hunk, Lance, let’s go.”

 

She grabbed the boys’ hands, pulling them a few meters away but not quite to the dance floor.

 

“I know that look,” said Hunk cautiously, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat collecting at the back of his neck. “What are you planning?”

 

Pidge glanced around, motioning for both boys to get closer.

 

“How much do you think you two can lift?”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Okay, okay, _fine_ , I’ll dance!” yelled Keith, clinging to the armrests as Hunk and Lance hoisted his chair into the air. Pidge cackled, recording a video on her phone as the boys turned in a circle, chanting “Form Voltron!” as they completed a rotation.

 

“ _Get me out of this quiznakking chair_!”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“I hate you.”

 

“I know,” said Pidge matter-of-factly, going into a twirl Keith had initiated before returning to open position. “But at least I got you out of doing the Macarena with Hunk and Lance.”

 

The red paladin glanced over, groaning under his breath as his colleagues completed the dance at completely different paces. Hunk nearly knocked Lance over when he did the quarter-turn jump, apologizing profusely as Lance clung to his waist and laughed like a hyena.

 

“They’re being obnoxious.”

 

“ _Relax_ , Keith: they’re having fun! Goodness knows you need a little every now and then! Besides, you can’t say this isn’t helping you with your footwork: you haven’t stepped on me in over a minute.”

 

Keith huffed, his eyes flitting over to where Lance and Hunk were trying to coax a red and purple alien to do the Hustle with them. They were having a little bit of trouble, as the alien had about half a dozen legs.

 

“What are you smiling about?”

 

“Nothing,” said Keith, far too quickly, as he guided the both of them to another side of the dance floor. He heard a familiar chuckle on his left, and spun around to see that Allura had lowered Shiro into an impressive dip. Their foreheads nearly touched as she pulled him back up, and Keith didn’t miss the impressive flush that tinted Shiro’s ears when the princess swept some stray hairs from his fringe back in place.

 

“Ten bucks they’ll kiss by the end of the night,” snickered Pidge, drawing Keith’s attention back to the both of them. He narrowly avoided stepping on her foot, but contemplated doing so intentionally just for the sake of keeping her in check.

 

“Weren’t _you_ the one complaining about heterosexual nonsense?” he quipped, this time allowing himself to be lead into a spin. “Besides, you know I’d lose that bet.”

 

“Oh, well…it was worth a try,” she pouted, pretending to be disappointed. “Now run along, grab a glass of water, and go dance with the boys: I need to go check on something.”

 

“What, you’ve got brownies in the oven or something?”

 

She punched him in the shoulder, snorting under her breath. “Oh, quiznak you. And Lance says you don’t have a sense of humor.”

 

“ _What_?”

 

She guided them both to the edge of the dance floor, holding Keith’s wrist so she could give him a fist bump.

 

“Hasta la later, Keith.”

 

He rolled his eyes, and made his way to the space punch bowl.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Fuck.”

 

Pidge double- and triple-checked the deepest recesses of the pockets on the coat she’d left draped across the chair in the dining hall: just as it had been before, the charging cord and connector cable were still present, but the C.U.B.E. (as well as all of the data from its first round of collection) were in the wind.

 

She’d checked her phone: 26 minutes since deployment. It should have returned for a recharge by now.

 

“ _Fuuuck_.”

 

The homing command she’d coded must have been corrupted or mistyped. An extra zero, or another error she’d somehow missed. Either way, she had until about the end of the night to locate a device the size of a tangerine in a room that was at least the size of a football field, occupied by hundreds (if not thousands) of aliens.

 

And it was invisible, because fuck _everything_.

 

Wait.

 

Pidge fished out her phone again, scrolling through her self-made apps until she came across the one she’d written to accompany the C.U.B.E. Even if it was out of batteries, it still would have been giving off signals; emitting feedback sonar to make sure that it didn’t run into any walls or people—

 

There!

 

The GPidgeS pinged, and her location as well as that of the C.U.B.E. pulsed on the screen.

 

Good, it was close: about twelve meters to her left and twenty-six meters forward…

 

Pidge looked up, tracking the approximate distance with her pointer finger…

 

To the center of the dance floor.

 

“FUCK.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Hunk!”

 

“Pidge, what’s—whoa, here we go!”

 

In an instant she’d grabbed both of his hands and dragged him onto the dance floor, catching Lance and Keith’s perplexed expressions out of the corner of her eye as she positioned one of Hunk’s hands on her waist and reached one of her own to grab his shoulder. She got them started in a simple one-two step she’d learned at cotillion half a lifetime ago, taking a moment to give him a reassuring nod before she laced their free hands together.

 

He was warm—almost impossibly so—and their faces were so close that his breath fogged up her glasses. They’d been closer, of course—Pidge needed to make a withdrawal from the Hunk Hug Bank at least three or four times a week—but something about this contact was almost…awkward.

 

“Nice job on the Macarena,” she managed to get out, allowing a smile to curve her lips. Anything to clear the air; she was still a little too overwhelmed to go over the circumstances that had led her here…

 

Hunk smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he relaxed somewhat. “Nice job getting Keith to dance,” he countered with a chuckle, twirling the both of them around to avoid a couple dancing on their right. “I thought he was gonna kill us after we pulled a Hora on him.”

 

“If you can believe it, his reaction was rather gentle in comparison to Grandma Holt’s at by brother’s bar mitzvah,” she said, laughing at the memory. “She absolutely lost her shit when a bunch of my cousins lifted her wheelchair into the air. I think I learned maybe three Yiddish swear words that day? That was before I had speech therapy for echolalia, too, so mom wasn’t too happy.”

 

The yellow paladin shook with laughter. “I hope you have that on video. Speaking of which…have you checked on the C.U.B.E.?”

 

Pidge bristled: she’d almost forgotten why she’d dragged Hunk here in the first place. She nodded, motioning for him to lean in closer so she could whisper.

 

“I must have missed an error in the homing coding, because it gave out a few meters to your left about eight minutes ago.”

 

Realization dawned on his face, followed shortly by a grin. “So I’m your recon buddy?”

 

“Precisely. You up for it?”

 

“Why not? I wouldn’t count on backup from Red and Blue, though: they look a little busy at the moment.”

 

Pidge turned in the direction of Hunk’s eye line, snorting under her breath as she caught Lance attempting to teach Keith how to bachata.

 

“So…how’re we gonna do this?”

 

The yellow paladin looked at her expectedly, the beginnings of a mischievous smile crawling up his lip. “I mean, you obviously have another plan you whipped up in like 4 seconds, right?”

 

She balled the fist at his shoulder and slugged him lightly, yielding a small snicker. Before she returned the hand to his shoulder, though, Pidge whipped her phone out of the pocket at her hip, pressing a few buttons in rapid succession before tucking it neatly into Hunk’s breast pocket, the GPidgeS app projected dimply onto the screen.

 

“Remind me how you did on the electric maze during training?”

 

Hunk rolled his eyes playfully. “You should know, given that you steered me into the wall three times on the first day.”

 

“I already told you that that was because your stride is so irregular, on top of being like twice as long as mine—“

 

“It’s 1.87 times longer: we measured, remember?”

 

She recalled Rover following the both of them up and down the halls as they’d traipsed the castle’s corridors on several trial runs. Of course, the entire ordeal had eventually transformed into a contest to see who could speed walk faster, but the converted Galra robot had yielded rather consistent results until its untimely demise during the raid on Arus.

 

“1.87 times longer,” she muttered, glancing down at their feet as if to confirm the values. “All right, to keep things simple I’ll just round up to two. You think you can go twen—er, sorry, twelve steps to the left?”

 

Over the course of the next thirty seconds the yellow paladin steered them left, weaving them underneath the outstretched arms of two particularly tall aliens that quickly fused into one entity to fill the space left behind. Pidge laughed, whipping her head around to catch one last glimpse of them before they separated again.

 

“I think we just witnessed some alien PDA?” said Hunk, chuckling awkwardly at the insinuation. His palms had become particularly sweaty, and the distinct dread of having Pidge realize as much was only adding to the problem: goodness knows she already spent most of her time these days surrounded by the unpleasant odor of adolescent bodies, and wasn’t afraid to bring it up whenever they ran low on deodorant.

 

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she countered, her gaze following the amoeboid couple across the dance floor. Hunk adjusted his gait, stooping down slightly to guide Pidge by the hips before she could run into another couple behind them. She looked back at him incredulously, a tad affronted by the gesture: he had practically lifted her, twirling her around in full circle as if she’d weighed nothing, until they reached their original position again. At this point, with all of their training and the weird alien voodoo that Coran inoculated their meals with, Pidge wouldn’t be surprised if Hunk could pick her up and hurl her like a javelin.

 

And the thought of it kind of thrilled her…?

 

“Sorry, sorry—there was a Dekelerri couple behind you—so where to next?”

 

Pidge moved as if to press her nose into his sternum, squinting as she tried to read the GPidgeS in his breast pocket under the bright lights of the dance hall.

 

“Fourteen steps backwards,” she muttered, continuing to scrutinize the screen, “and…hold on…just a hair to your left after that.”

 

Hunk rotated them about face, leading his partner forward into a particularly dense throng of dancers. The air was warmer here; thicker: like the Garrison had been just before a rainstorm, and Pidge had to keep herself from grinding her teeth together in anxiety.

 

They were only a few feet away now, and the most critical moment was approaching. If they mistimed this—were even a foot or two off—then any subsequent attempts would look suspicious.

 

“When I say so,” Pidge whispered, “I’m going to need you to dip me backwards and to your left. My right hand will hold you by the shoulder, and your right hand will have to hold me by the waist when I reach down to put the C.U.B.E. back into my pocket. Does that all make sense?”

 

A shaky nod.

 

“Okay, and…now.”

 

She clutched at the material at Hunk’s bicep as he lowered her down onto his knee, leaning forward to have her as close to the ground as possible. Her fingers began their search as soon as they grazed the dance floor, and the yellow paladin couldn’t help but chuckle as she blew a frustrated raspberry when her success was not immediate.

 

It took a two or three ticks for her to find the C.U.B.E. and shove it back into her pocket, though her time spent nearly horizontal was enough to send her spinning as Hunk dragged her back up, completing the dip with a final flourish.

 

Their success apparent, the pair couldn’t help but look at one another rather smugly as they quite literally waltzed to the edge of the dance floor, giving one another a high five as they crossed to meet their teammates on the other side.

 

“Yooooo, I didn’t know that you two could dance!” exclaimed Lance, trotting over to fist bump the both of them. “Did you two do Ballroom Night at the Garrison or something?”

 

“Cotillion,” they answered in unison, and then suddenly Lance wasn’t a factor in the conversation anymore.

 

“Dude, your moms made you do cotillion too?!”

 

“Yeah! We had the tiny plates and the gazillion forks and everything! I would get _so_ antsy during the dining portion because it took for _ever_.”

 

“Same: one day I ditched and made Matt pick me up so that we could get tacos at the food truck. I got carnitas all over my dress, and was grounded for a month.”

 

“The only reason I put up with it was because Mom and Mama would take me to McDonald’s to get the 12-piece Chicken McNugget meal afterwards…they knew better, though, and always brought me a change of clothes—“

 

They continued animatedly as the red and blue paladins looked on, somewhat perplexed by the exchange.

 

“Dude, what’s a cuh-tillyun?”

 

Lance shrugged. “I think it’s, like, some camp that rich people send their kids to to learn manners and stuff?”

 

Pidge straddled the back of the chair that Hunk had been kind enough to pull out for her, leaning forward as he offered her a bubbly, light green beverage. She tasted it tentatively, then beamed and downed the entire drink in one swig.

 

“Hunk, you gotta try this! It tastes like Orange F—“

 

She burped the word ‘Fanta’ rather loudly, inspiring some equally raucous laughter from Hunk as she stood up to take a mock bow.

 

Keith looked at Lance, an eyebrow raised. “You’re telling me that Pidge went to a _manners camp_.”

 

Lance threw up his arms up in a universal gesture of ignorance. “I don’t know! Knowing Pidge she probably got herself kicked out of manners camp so that she could go program vending machines to give her free snacks or break into the CIA.”

 

“You can program a vending machine to hack into the CIA?”

 

“No! How did you—? Nope, forget it. Your water break is over, anyway: come bachata. _Baila conmigo._ We can spy on Shiro and Allura as they make goo-goo eyes at each other. _”_

 

Lance outstretched a hand, his grin only widening as Keith begrudgingly took it in his own, rolling his eyes as the blue paladin dragged him to the dance floor once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Neurodivergent!Pidge And Jewish!Pidge headcanons ahoy!
> 
> The Hora is a dance that is frequently performed at bar and bat mitzvahs (among other celebrations), and involves people dancing in concentric circles and sometimes lifting the celebrated individual(s) into the air on a chair.
> 
> Echolalia is a condition where a person repeats words and phrases that they’ve heard, and is pretty common among individuals (especially children) on the autism spectrum. My understanding is that a lot of people ‘grow out’ of echolalia naturally as their language skills develop, and that conversation strategies and therapy also help.
> 
> Baila conmigo: Dance with me.


	14. Year 2 (part 11.1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit goeth down
> 
> Pidge yelleth timber

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Year II (continued)**
> 
> **Warnings: This chapter gets a bit intense: a panic attack is described in some detail, there is some description of injuries/pain, and vomit is mentioned. The Paladins aren’t having a good night.**

Pidge was able to fix the C.U.B.E.’s coding relatively quickly during a bathroom break, sneaking into a stall to scan the device’s code on her phone for potential errors. Now that she was here—and away from the cacophony brewing outside—the location and nature of the error had made sense: she’d spilled a cup of Hunk’s ‘space coffee’ all over her blueprints that day, and some zeroes had inevitably blurred into ones, so to speak.

 

Nevertheless, Pidge was delighted to see that the device had managed to collect and store information on the backup drive, so she and Hunk would have plenty of material to sift through once they got back to the castle. She’d talked to him about it in brief, and the both of them had agreed to meet up in the living room before brunch the next morning to scan what useful information the files had gleaned: they’d set it up so that Pidge would handle all material that pertained to prisons and prison transport hubs, while Hunk would be processing any conversations that the C.U.B.E. had picked up about the paladins. This was a cosmopolitan gathering of potential Voltron Alliance allies, after all, so it was in their best interest to collect as much background information on their fellow attendees as they could before moving forward.

 

Of course, they still had about two vargas left of mingling and dancing before Allura would even consider leaving to head back to the castle, so data collection opportunities were in no shortage at the moment. And with Shiro and the princess keeping each other busy, well: so long as that creep Rorix kept off her back, she and Hunk would be able to proceed uninterrupted.

 

When she finished adjusting the C.U.B.E.’s settings she flushed the alien toilet (?) for good measure (juuuust in case someone was listening), wincing as the deafening noise of a vacuum echoed off of the undecorated marble walls. She was still rubbing at her ear when she stepped out of the cubicle, quickly releasing the device for another run as she tucked the charger back into her oversized jacket.

 

Hunk was waiting for her, a small platter of appetizers in one hand and a glass of the same blue liquid that Keith had been sampling earlier in the other.

 

“I brought snacks and a little bubbly,” he declared cheerfully, donning his trademark sunshine smile. “You gotta try this stuff, it’s really quite tangy.”

 

“Tangy?”

 

“Yes: a bit of a kick, but Shiro assured me that it wasn’t alcoholic.”

 

Pidge fake-scoffed, taking the offered drink in hand. “You’re no fun,” she teased, swirling the glass and sampling the aroma. She wrinkled her nose, and suddenly she was holding the glass less like it was a beverage and more like it was a volatile substance back in her lab on the castle-ship.

 

“Aw Hunk, don’t tell me you _drank_ this stuff,” she whined, coughing and gagging on the smell. “It smells exactly like orange powder my dad puts in the dishwasher pre-wash to scour the plates. I’m surprised it didn’t burn a hole in your esophagus, actually.”

 

The engineer laughed, taking the glass back. “It tingled a little, but it was nothing compared to that magma sauce meat thing I ate at the Capsician market a few weeks ago. I had heartburn for a _week_.”

 

“And then the rest of us on the ship got heartburn for a week because Coran started making our meals again while you were in bed recovering,” she replied pointedly, eyeing a few of the items on the plate Hunk had brought, “but I’m going to assume that these are a little less rough on the palate?”

 

“That purple one on the left?” Hunk replied, referring to a macaron-like pastry, “Tastes like stale corn chips. White people food.”

 

Pidge snorted. “Hunk, that’s blue.”

 

“Augh, curse my protanopi—“

_BANG._

 

In a second Pidge had reached for and activated the bayard slung at her hip, Hunk not far behind as the plate in his hands clattered to the floor and a large gun materialized in its place. They whipped around, ready for action as a commotion erupted from somewhere near the beverage station, the other party-goers flinching and recoiling from the sudden noise.

 

Hunk was all business now, arms rippling with effort as he hoisted the firearm on one shoulder and aimed it toward the commotion, his fingers still far enough from the trigger that nothing short of his certainty would yield live ammunition. Pidge hovered near his elbow, crouched low and ready to strike, the grapple clenched tightly in her fist humming with charge as it glowed in the low light.

 

Another _bang_ , and then suddenly a figure was flying and flailing through the air—a bird-like alien, though Pidge was having some difficulty identifying the species—and crumpling in a heap several meters away, the jewels slung about the alien’s neck scattering to the floor upon impact. Free of their strings, several hundred beads and pearls hopped and rolled across the dance floor, scattering far enough to rush past the yellow and green paladins’ feet as they cautiously inched their way closer to the commotion.

 

They didn’t stop moving forward until they both heard a chillingly familiar voice echo across the hall.

 

“Lay another _feather_ on my fiancée and I will personally ensure that what remains of your hide will be sent back to your sordid hovel in a Gnorrean ashtray.”

 

Princess Allura slicked back a few strands of hair that had come loose from her bun, her dainty gloves split and stained with blood as her fingernails dug deep into her palms. Behind her Shiro had activated his arm, the fabric of his right sleeve shredded to ribbons as the Galra tech hummed and pulsed with energy, but virtually all of the composure he usually brought to battle was gone. From what Pidge could see he was frantic, eyes wild and brimming with fear as they fell upon the form of a short woman with the same avian appearance.

 

Like her kin, she bore an impressive plume of feathers about her neck and a long, highly ornamented beak not unlike a plague doctor’s mask protruding from her bony, sunken face. She was enrobed in a myriad of mixed textiles, and bent at the waist over what appeared to be an oddly shaped cane that was encrusted in jewels at the hilt, curving sharply downward in a distinct, bow-like slope that the green paladin had only seen once before.

 

Hunk sucked in a breath beside her, nearly dropping his weapon as he recognized the object clenched in the crone’s talons as the head of a Balmeran’s femur.

 

The woman emitted a gurgling sound that might have been a laugh, her eyes alight with a near-fluorescent red as the black paladin trembled in terror under her gaze. Judging by the smirk that curled the corners of her beak, she seemed entirely unfazed by the fact that her recently dispatched servants shared at least a few broken bones and a concussion between them.

 

“Champion,” she crooned, each of the sparkling rings on her fat fingers glinting as they drummed along the cane handle. “My, my, it’s been a few feebs, has it not?”

 

Shiro clutched the side of his head with his flesh hand, breaths shallow and rattled as the woman hobbled closer, seeming delighted by the fact that the black paladin had literally frozen in fear. The woman sampled the air with her tongue, humming appreciatively at whatever she had tasted, entirely uncaring when the princess stepped between them.

 

“Not a step further,” she threatened icily, lips pulled back in an almost feral snarl as her Altean abilities kicked in: the dress that had once trailed on the floor rose to her knees as her height increased in jerky spurts, her manicured fingernails growing and curling into sharp talons that shredded what little remained of her gloves.

 

The avian alien cocked her head curiously, her beady eyes finally catching and resting on the princess.

 

“So the rumors were true,” she muttered, and the revelation seemed to make her chuckle in glee. “King Alfor’s daughter, back from the dead to challenge the Galra Empire! And what’s more, _romping in the sack_ with our very own crown jewel of the gladiator ring—”

 

Several people around them whispered amongst themselves, unsure of whether to focus on Shiro or the strange woman before them. Hunk was certain that they’d all known about the infamous Galra gladiator matches, but doubted that anyone had been acquainted enough with the Empire to know about the details of Shiro’s imprisonment.

 

This could get bad, and fast.

 

He nudged Pidge, who flinched at his touch and spat out the fidget she’d been nervously teething for the past two minutes, her bayard trembling in her grasp.

 

“I don’t like this,” he whispered, his eyes scanning the crowd for Lance and Keith as Pidge shifted her stance beside him. “That lady is giving off some _nasty_ juju, and is far too relaxed to be alone. We need to keep an eye out for reinforcements.”

 

Pidge nodded curtly, though her mind was elsewhere: a cramp in her abdomen was throbbing something fierce, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why it wasn’t going away: sure, it wasn’t _impossible_ for her period to be coming this early, but even the worse of the cramps usually faded after a few seconds.

 

“Pidge?”

 

He was focused on her now, eyebrows knit together in consternation as another particularly painful cramp inspired a wince.

 

“God _dammit_ , that hurts like a motherfucker,” she muttered behind clenched teeth, hissing softly as she clutched at her side with her free hand. Pidge briefly registered the pounding of her own heartbeat in her ears, shallow and rapid and anxious and altogether insufficient to keep her cells adequately supplied with oxygen—

 

The woman turned around, a single sunken eye locking immediately onto the green paladin, and Pidge felt her entire body seize, the bile in her throat rising, rising—

 

And just like that, she fell to her knees and vomited all over the floor.

 

Hunk was at her side in an instant, nearly dropping his gun in his haste to pull his friend’s hair from her face as she emptied the contents of her stomach, sobbing loudly as she gulped for air.

 

“ _Pidge_!” he cried, covering her hunched figure with his own as he cowered under the gaze of the mysterious figure, feeling altogether helpless and desperate as she watched the pair with thinly veiled interest.

 

“Please! Stop it!” he cried, curling Pidge protectively into his shoulder as she continued to hyperventilate and clutch at her stomach. “She’s hurting _,_ _please_ —“

 

“Her suffering is inevitable, human,” she crooned condescendingly, talons tapping on the particularly large ruby embedded in the handle of her walking stick. “As is yours, I’m afraid.”

 

A sharp pain erupted in Hunk’s side, white-hot as it pierced his lung and wrenched a choked yell from his throat, and then he was airborne, falling backwards as if pushed by some unseen force, blood pounding in his ears—

 

He hit the wall back first, crying out as he felt the material buckle under the force of the throw—

 

A flash; a crackle of lightning—

 

Nothing.

 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (((this is a 2-part update. the other half will be coming soon)))


	15. Year 2 (part 11.2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro are in for a rough recovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings: More descriptions of panic attacks and physical/mental trauma and associated PTSD.**
> 
>  

 

…INITIALIZING C.U.B.E. RECALL SEQUENCE…

 

…KEYWORD SEARCH. PALADIN. VOLTRON. GALRA. ALTEA. CHAMPION. …

 

…342 RESULTS FOUND...

 

…>SORT CHRONOLOGICALLY …

…>SORT BY RELEVANCE…

…>SORT BY LENGTH…

…>REFINE SEARCH…

 

…CHRONOLOGY SEARCH SELECTED …

 

…PLAY ALL? >Y >N …

 

…PLAY ALL…

 

… “There they are, Haflox: the Paladins of Voltron…” …

 

… “Do you suppose they’re of Altean descent? My cousin has some Altean on their Nordarian side, but their ears are so much pointier…” …

 

… “They yield the universe’s greatest weapon…” …

 

… “…the Princess and her advisor are the only known full-blooded Alteans left…” …

 

… “Champion.” …

 

… “Rumor has it that the red paladin has Galra blood. I find it hard to imagine that the Alteans would be foolish enough to trust him…” …

 

… “…a pity that the Alteans have stooped to breeding with such primitive, simple creatures. And to think that Alfor’s court had _standards_ before Zarkon went and blew the planet to smithereens…” …

 

… “…it’s the Champion...” …

 

… “…I heard that the black paladin beat a Sylerian prisoner to death with their own severed _gafloban_ in the gladiator ring …” …

 

… “…Champion?” …

 

… “Look at it, toting that Druid weapon about as a limb. I can’t believe she lets the Champion _touch_ her with it. What an abomination.” …

 

…“…they chattered about the Champion’s savagery for _doboshes;_ how it ripped the organs of its challengers from their chest cavities with its bare hands…“ …

 

… “Allura, I _can’t_ —w-what the Galra did to me—what the Druids…” …

 

…”Shiro, look at me! You are _not_ a monster. You are _not_ the Champion. You are a Paladin of Voltron…”…

 

…“Champion! My, my, it’s been a few feebs, has it not?”…

 

… “…the Champion is going to lose it and waste us all…” …

 

… “…My Lord, the Harpeyii has entered the paladins’ vicinity…” …

 

…“King Alfor’s daughter, back from the dead to challenge the—“ …

 

…RECALL PAUSED…

 

…>RESUME RECALL…

…>REWIND…

…>MAIN MENU …

 

Pidge’s thumb hovered over the controls, adjusting her headphones with her free hand before jotting down some notes on her laptop.

 

She was in the med bay, wrapped from head to toe in a cocoon of heavy blankets, the monitor at her bedside thrumming with energy as her pulse danced across the screen. Though she had taken the Altean equivalent of Ativan less than an hour ago her heart still pushed against her sternum, threatening to leap its way right out of her throat and straight into her lap. She pinned the rubber figure 8 she kept on a cord around her neck between her lips, the material now so worn through that every so often her teeth would slip and grind against one another, and just about every other letter Pidge managed to type out required the assistance of her word processing software to string together even somewhat coherent sentences.

 

To be completely honest she could have had the software transcribe all of the findings into text but so help her _God_ if she had a single idle moment between now and the time her body finally succumbed to sleep Pidge knew she would bite her nails until they bled. They were down two members of Team Voltron on active duty, so as long as her mind denied her peace she may as well be productive.

 

Except, well, even _that_ was getting pretty difficult now, given the fact that Coran and Allura had decided to strike up a conversation right outside of the med bay, and what she could make out from their muffled voices was doing little to calm her nerves.

 

“…had hurled quite a distance: I’m actually surprised that only two vertebrae are fractured, to be honest, and that his ribs are only a bit bruised.”

 

“But before we put him under, Hunk said that he felt like someone had stabbed him in the lung, not the back,” said Coran. Pidge could envision the man pointing to each of the regions as he described them. “And what’s more, he told me that he felt the pain _before_ he hit the wall. Did Pidge–?”

 

“Pidge hasn’t spoken since the incident.”

 

“At all?”

 

The green paladin winced at the words, working the fidget furiously between her teeth. It was hard to explain that you weren’t in the mood to talk when you’d just witnessed your best friend screaming in pain and being thrown against a wall while you felt like someone was scooping out your insides like a goddamned jack-o-lantern.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“And Shiro?”

 

“Still sedated, but physically unscathed. His cortisol levels have begun to stabilize—“

 

Fuck it. She’d had enough of this.

 

Pidge abandoned her laptop and the C.U.B.E. on the bed, huffing a string of Yiddish curses as she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The device that Coran had attached to her wrist to monitor her vitals beeped in protest as she breached the proximity alarm, but the green paladin made quick work of the lock and hurled it onto the bed with the rest of her things as she shuffled out the door.

 

“Pidge?”

 

The green paladin barely acknowledged the two Alteans as she speed-walked past them, the blanket around her shoulders trailing on the ground behind her as the click of Allura’s heels echoed in the hallway not far behind her.

 

“Pidge—“

 

“I need to walk right now.”

 

“But you’re hurt, and we still don’t know what—“

 

“I need to walk right now.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

A half hour of pacing up and down the dimly lit hallways had done little to calm her nerves. She’d jumped nearly a foot in the air when one of the mice had scampered around the corner a few minutes ago (no doubt sent by Allura to check on her whereabouts) and, while the pressure of the blanket had been somewhat soothing at first, the combination of its weight, her adolescent body, and the speed-walking was making her sweat something fierce.

 

Nothing was working. The alien Ativan, the weighted blanket, the pacing—her usual strategies had been completely exhausted.

 

Nothing was working.

 

Nothing was _working_.

 

The panic was swirling in her gut again, clutching and grasping at her heart as it pounded in distress. She knew that the dread was coming; knew that any moment she would feel the world crashing down around her; knew that her body would succumb to the irrational, nonsensical _bullshit_ that she would spend every waking moment for the next few weeks avoiding—

 

A tug.

 

Pidge halted, momently snapped out of her reverie by a strange sensation near the middle of her spine. It was barely perceivable underneath her ragged breath, thrumming in synchronicity with her pulse as she continued to heave in great gulps of air.

 

“What—?”

 

It was as if another beating heart had suddenly materialized alongside her own, cradling it gently and softly. It was— _uncomfortable_ , to say the least, but it had slowed the progression of a panic attack, so she wasn’t about to complain. In fact, if she was measuring her pulse correctly, her heart rate was actually slowing down.

 

This had weird Altean magic written all over it.

 

“J-jade?” she whispered, chewing a fingernail as her Lion’s soft, mechanical growl echoed inside of her head. The creature gave Pidge a reassuring nuzzle, curling up to her close and tight. She could almost perceive the faint odor of engine grease and leather as the green lion enveloped her, and felt her heartstrings tugged as Black and Goldie’s almost maternal concern washed over her.

 

“Hunk and Shiro are stable,” she murmured, a relieved purr rumbling somewhere beneath her in the Lions’ hangars. “We were attacked by this—this _thing_ ; this alien _thing_ that could inflict pain without touching us, and H-hunk was thrown against a wall and Shiro w-was so _scared_ that he couldn’t even move and—“

 

Pidge knew she was rambling; knew that the Lions had probably already received this information through their mental connections with all of the Paladins, but the words kept on spilling out.

 

“—a-and I felt like something was being _cut out of me_ , but Coran and Allura scanned me and said that nothing was _wrong_ , and, and I was _useless_ ; I couldn’t do anything when it hurt Hunk—“

 

She curled in on herself, wrapping the blanket even more tightly around her shoulders as she angled her head down and attempted to control her breathing. The Lions continued their reassuring ministrations, and Goldie—as sweet and demure as ever—cooed affectionately when Pidge pressed her cheek into his neck. The metal felt warm on her skin: warm like a touch of sunlight peeking through the clouds on a windy day in early spring; warm like her father’s smile when she showed him her first homemade computer; warm like Grandma Holt’s onion challah bread dipped in potato leek soup; warm like Hunk’s Hug Bank hugs—

 

Goldie didn’t think any less of her because of what had happened, and neither would Hunk when he woke up. The other Lions hummed in agreement as Jade nuzzled her head under Pidge’s hands, curling next to Goldie as Black watched over them.

 

“Thank you,” she murmured, giving Jade a final squeeze before she opened her eyes. She was back in the dimly lit hallway, her feet cold and stiff against the tile where her toes peeked out from underneath the blanket. The green lion nudged gently at her consciousness as she rose to her feet, clutching the crown molding for support when the familiar pins-and-needles sensation prickled at her calves. Though exhaustion still pulled insistently at her eyelids, Pidge knew that she wouldn’t sleep a wink unless she checked in on Shiro and Hunk for Black and Goldie first.

 

It wasn’t long before she was back at the entrance to the med bay, waving her hand over the keypad to gain access to the wing where they kept the healing pods. Pidge tentatively stepped in after the door hissed open, squinting as the bright blue lights from the computer monitors punched through the darkness. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but when they did Pidge realized that she had almost walked into an unfamiliar object just a few steps ahead. It came into focus as the green paladin drew closer, peering curiously at the myriad of knobs and dials along its sides. It looked decidedly primitive compared to the rest of the Altean tech on the ship, but the characteristic blue glow that seemed to emanate from its core left no doubts with regard to its origin.

 

Pidge was so transfixed by the monolithic contraption that she jumped nearly a foot in the air when Allura’s familiar lilt emanated from somewhere not far behind her.

 

“Jesus Christ on a _stick_ , Allura—!”

 

The Altean princess shrank back, raising an eyebrow as the door hissed closed behind her.

 

“My apologies,” she murmured, tucking her hands behind her back. “I thought I’d be the only one in here at this time of night. I did not mean to startle you.”

 

“No, no, it’s fine: I’m—I’m jumpier than usual, is all.”

 

She looked away, biting her lip.

 

“Pidge—“

 

“I’m fine,” she replied curtly, hunching her shoulders. “I was a bit shaky before, but I’m fine now. The Lions helped—the Lions are helping me work through it.”

 

Allura didn’t look entirely convinced, but she let it slip for now. “Very well. Were you here to check on the boys?”

 

“Yeah, but then I stumbled across this thing,” she replied, gesturing at the machine in the center of the room. Her fascination with it wasn’t pressing enough to keep her from seeing her teammates, but she was looking for any deflection she could get right now to keep Allura from prying further. “What is it? It looks Altean, but it’s—old? Well, comparatively speaking: everything in this castle is old…”

 

Pidge screamed at herself internally as she trailed off into silence, awaiting Allura’s answer. For a moment the green paladin was afraid that she’d call bullshit and continue her mothering routine, but Allura seemed to think better of it.

 

“This is a kémil chamber,” she supplied, striding up to trace her fingers against one of the outer edges. “It’s a bit of an antique, as you noticed, but it still works.”

 

“What does it do?”

 

“It was somewhat of a precursor to the healing pods,” Allura explained, nodding at the inactive apparatuses against the wall. “Before we developed the technology to speed up healing at the cellular level with the pods, Alteans with serious or particularly painful injuries were sedated and kept in these chambers until their healing was complete. The main vat is filled with a semi-viscous solution that dulls the user’s senses and keeps them buoyant, while an attached apparatus allows the individual to breathe.”

 

“So equal parts sensory deprivation chamber, iron lung, hibernation cave, and coma ward,” Pidge murmured to herself, inspecting the machine a bit more closely. “It’s neat and all—and definitely better than the crap we have back on Earth—but if the healing pods are working, why do we—?”

 

She made a strange noise in her throat when a shutter towards the top peeled back, yielding at the touch of Allura’s fingers to reveal the black paladin encased inside.

 

Just as the princess had described, Shiro almost seemed to be asleep: the fringe of white hair at the top of his head waved languidly in the solution as it circulated around the chamber, and every few moments the mask covering his nose and mouth would fog up momentarily in time with the rising and falling of his chest. Due to the size of the viewing window his body was only visible from the mid-breast up, but even from a few feet away Pidge could see that his shoulders and collarbone were crisscrossed with scars.

 

“Shiro wasn’t physically hurt during the altercation tonight,” Allura explained, peering down into the opening, “but that vile creature somehow activated his Galra arm and Shiro couldn’t disarm the attack features. It burned right through his sleeve, and left a mark on the inside of one of the pods when we tried to run a diagnostic scan. After some deliberation we decided that a kémil chamber would be the best option for him, as the solution is highly conductive and the arm’s self-preservation function would automatically disarm the device upon contact.”

 

Allura rolled back the sleeve of her nightgown, dipping her fingers into the solution as if to test its temperature. She swirled them idly, consternation etched into her features as her eyes traced the raised white lines that marred his skin. Even on the planets with the hottest climates Shiro always insisted on covering himself from the neck down, and it broke her heart that the physical toil he’d experienced as a prisoner of war was likely to blame.

 

Pidge looked away, nervously shifting her weight from foot to foot as she tucked her chin into the blanket.

 

“I’m…going to go check on Hunk, and then try to get some sleep,” she announced, acknowledging Allura with a small wave before beginning her trip further back into the room. “In the morning we should re-group and try to figure out our next steps.”

 

The princess hummed in acknowledgement, murmuring her farewell as she pulled her knees to her chest and continued to swirl the water in her fingers.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

The first thing Pidge noticed when she arrived at the healing pod chamber was Lance’s blue high-tops parked near the entrance.

 

Well, they _would_ have been the first thing she’d noticed had there been any light on in the corridor.

 

“ _Fuckin’ a_!” she hissed, worming her arms free from the blanket just in time to catch herself as she fell forward onto the floor, wincing as her right wrist smarted at the impact. “LANCE!”

 

The blue paladin grumbled as he stirred from his light slumber, complementing the telltale shuffling and ruffling of his hands in his pockets as he searched for his phone. “Wha…Pidge? What’re you—?”

 

He activated the flashlight function on his phone, aiming it towards the sound of Pidge’s groaning. She hissed at the brightness, raising a hand to cover her face.

 

“ _Really_ , Lance? In the _middle of the doorway_?!” she whispered harshly, grabbing the high-tops by the laces and chucking them lightly in Lance’s general direction. He squawked in surprise as they made contact with his shins, gangly arms thrown forward to shield his face from the oncoming assault.

 

“I didn’t think that anybody else was gonna _be_ here this time of night!” the blue paladin retorted, his lower lip protruding in an impressive pout. “Allura n’ Coran were in the med bay trying to figure out what the hell happened at the party; Keith was having an angst tantrum in the training room with one of the gladiators, you, Hunk, and Shiro were here in the med bay—“

 

Realization crept into his features.

 

“Oh my God, _Pidge_ , you’re okay!” he breathed, reaching forward to initiate a hug. He stopped abruptly, though, when he noticed that she’d involuntarily recoiled from the gesture.

 

“Sorry,” she muttered, tentatively leaning forward until Lance’s arms could wrap comfortably around her shoulders and encircle her back. He squeezed her tight, his pointy chin digging into her scapula as she became well acquainted with his collarbones.

 

“No, no, there’s no need to apologize,” Lance assured in return, the slight edge of wistfulness in his voice betraying his true feelings. “If anything I should be the one apologizing, actually…”

 

He pulled back, rubbing the back of his neck without making eye contact. Pidge raised an eyebrow, cocking her head.

 

“For what?”

 

“That space baklava I tried to make for dessert the other day—?”

 

“ _Lance._ ”

 

The blue paladin bit his lip, the cheerful façade melting away. It usually took a bit more prodding than this to get Lance to crumble, but he was tired and presumably feeling guiltier than he usually did.

 

“I’m sorry for—for not being there. I d-don’t even really know what happened, and I’m pretty sure that I would’ve been useless even if I _had_ been there, and—and the point is that I wasn’t there for the team, _again_ —“

 

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” said Pidge pointedly, holding a finger to his mouth. She took a deep breath, gesturing for Lance to do the same before she finally removed her finger.

 

“Okay: tell me where are we right now.”

 

“The med bay.”

 

“Why are you here, and for how long have you been here?”

 

“I came as soon as Coran would let me to check up on you, Hunk, and Shiro.”

 

Pidge raised her eyebrow, implicitly suggesting that Lance go over what he’d just said. When the message flew over his head, the green paladin gave an exasperated sigh.

 

“Lance, you’re here at fuck-it-all o’clock in the morning and you’re still in your formal clothes, sleeping on this nasty-ass floor that hasn’t been cleaned in ten thousand years to be with your injured teammates, and you’re telling me that you _aren’t there for the team_.”

 

“Well I’m here now! I wasn’t before!”

 

“And why weren’t you there before?”

 

“Because some _puta_ insulted Keith and when I grabbed him by the collar to keep him from punching the guy out I knocked a Qijitii waiter over and got nunvill all over Keith’s suit and had to drag him to the bathroom to calm him down and help him wash the stuff out of his hair—“

 

“And how is keeping Keith from doing something reckless and stupid not being there for your team?” Pidge interjected, running her hands down her face as she groaned. “Look, Lance: the crazy monster bird-witch-thing that attacked us? Out of our control. Keith being impulsive and potentially ruining our alliance with the Qijitii? YOU kept that from happening! YOU kept him from getting into Christ knows what with some alien we probably know _nothing_ about! You were there to rein in Keith, and in my book that means that you were there for the team!

 

You know what _I_ did tonight? I fell on my ass and screamed while that _thing_ performed some psychic alien voodoo on me, and when Hunk stood up for me he got the _same damn thing_ before being thrown against a wall so hard that it _literally_ _broke his back_!”

 

Pidge gasped for air, hugging herself tight as she could as hot tears spilled down her freckled cheeks. It was all she could do not to release the heaving sob bubbling in her throat, but something of a gasp still managed to slip through a few moments later.

 

“G-god _dammit_ ,” she muttered, biting into her knuckles as her tiny body shook beneath the blanket. Pidge _hated_ crying in front of people; hated that, more oftentimes than not, the dam would break and she’d be an ugly blubbering mess that couldn’t breathe through her nose or talk without her voice doing that pathetic squeak—

 

“Pidge—“

 

Lance had scooted forward to hold her between his outstretched legs, hugging her close and tight with one arm while stroking her back with the other. She burrowed herself into his shoulder, her sobs muffled against the front of his shirt as she finally allowed the tears to flow freely.

 

There had been another time like this: maybe a little under a year ago, when the trail to finding Matt and her father had gone cold and barren as their last lead had yielded another dead end. Pidge had curled up in Jade for almost two days, and no one had been able to get past the green lion’s impressive maw to console her until Lance had stomped into the hangar at two in the morning castle time with a shower caddy in one arm and a towel under the other, declaring quite truthfully that for the sake of his anxiety he couldn’t let anyone on Team Voltron go more than thirty-six hours without at _least_ washing their face if he could help it. She’d yelled at Jade when the lion had let him in and had given Lance a glare that was strong enough to curdle milk when he’d handed her the steamed towel, but in less than a minute her façade had crumbled and Lance had found himself stroking her hair until her sobs had subsided enough to allow her to sleep.

 

They’d never talked about or even mentioned it afterward, and Lance knew without a doubt that this incident would follow suit. Nevertheless, he’d been there for her then and he’d be there for her now, tentatively filling in the edges of the void that Matt had left when he could until the siblings were reunited.

 

He wasn’t quite sure how long he held her, but by the time her breathing had returned to normal Lance had had to bend his lanky legs to regain some of the sensation that had been lost. Pidge mumbled something then, squirming in his hold.

 

“Huh?”

 

“I said that you’re bony as hell,” Pidge muttered, her voice still muffled by the blanket. “Nearly poked a hole in my back with your damn chin.”

 

Lance snorted, snuggling in close until the green paladin groaned in protest. “I’m no beanbag chair like Hunk is,” he said wistfully, “but you know you like it,” he teased, nudging her back with his elbows until she squealed with laughter.

 

“Fuck off, Lance,” she said playfully, her nose still slightly clogged up with lacrimal congestion as he gave her a final squeeze. When she popped out from the tangle of blankets her hair stood out in all directions, and she could barely make out the silhouette of the blue paladin’s head through the errant strands that had fallen into her eyes.

 

“But being real, though,” he said, stretching out his legs before stumbling to his feet, “Hunk’s hugs are unbeatable.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Silence.

 

“I miss him.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

“Where is he, anyway?”

 

Lance turned to face a corner of the room. “He’s here: the castle just dimmed the lights for the night cycle,” he replied. “Activate healing pod X3-p.3 lights, 15% power.”

 

The pod lights flickered to life at his command, illuminating the room in a soft blue glow.

 

Pidge sucked in a breath as Hunk’s familiar features came into view within the previously opaque healing pod, the harsh light softened by the curve of his jaw. It snagged between his brows, catching the etched planes of the furrow between them before cascading down the familiar jut of his nose and ending in a halo just above his upper lip. His skin—usually a rich brown that practically glowed with brilliance next to the warm amber of his eyes—was now almost an ashen grey against the stark white of the bodysuit, and he seemed almost naked without the familiar orange headband cresting his brow.

 

If Pidge hadn’t known any better, she would have pegged Hunk for a mannequin in a wax museum.

 

In a few short steps she had reached the front of the pod, her freckled fingers emerging from the blanket to trace the lines of data projected onto the glass. She surmised from the tidbits of written Altean that she managed to translate on the spot that Hunk was stable for the time being, but that the factors contributing to his injuries were too complicated to yield an accurate estimate for his release from the pod.

 

“Did I look like this when I was in there?” Lance asked softly, his voice cracking with emotion as Pidge scrutinized the data.

 

She flinched, hunching her shoulders in close.

 

“No.”

 

“No?”

 

“The suit looks better on him than it did on you.”

 

Lance snorted at that. “Well duh, Hunk makes everything better. It’s, like, a law of nature.”

 

He heard her give a light chuckle. “And don’t I believe it.”

 

A long silence stretched between them then, punctuated only by the steady beating of Hunk’s heart on the alien EKG. Pidge had activated the audio with a few clicks, tapping out the beat against her side with her finger.

 

“You looked far more at peace,” she murmured after a long pause, her eyes still fixed to Hunk’s visage.

 

No reply came.

 

“Lance?”

 

She turned around, rubbing her tired eyes as they met the darkness.

 

The blue paladin and his shoes were gone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> A/N: Lance went to bed: he didn’t pull a Shiro and just disappear. Jsyk, because ending a chapter with “he was gone” tends to give off that vibe.
> 
>  


	16. Year 2 (Part 12)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Year II (Part 12)**
> 
> **This chapter alternates between the recent past and the present (intervals are separated with an ellipse […]): kinda like one of those episodes of TV where they start of _in medias res_ (in the middle/at the climax) and then use the rest of the time to build up to that point and talk about the immediate aftermath. **
> 
> **Things are starting to get a bit spicier: from this point on sex will be mentioned both implicitly and explicitly, because most of the paladins are teenagers and that’s what teenagers do.**
> 
> **Content warnings: stalking/predatory behavior with sexual intent, mentions of (past) mutilation.**
> 
>  

Keith was used to being uncomfortable.

 

Between the lumpy, threadbare mattress he’d slept on in the corner room of the child services office between foster homes and the splinter-ridden floors of his father’s desert shack, he had developed enough of a backbone to endure the minor physical annoyances of his life as a paladin. The way his hair stuck to the back of his neck under the helmet; the aches and pains he’d get out of bed with after he trained with Lance using the ‘stun’ setting on his bayard; how a new scar would pull at his skin when he emerged from the healing pod—quickly accommodating when a bit of himself was chipped away was the new normal, he supposed.

 

But the careful neutrality on Rorix’s visage as he, Lance, and Allura had entered the great hall in their paladin armor the next evening was causing the skin at the back of his neck to prickle more than usual. They’d been going on for a few minutes now, explaining the circumstances of the meeting to the rest of their audience before finally addressing the paladins.

 

“It was a great misfortune that yesterquaint’s festivities did not proceed as smoothly as anticipated,” announced the Geme, waving their arms in a grand gesture. “Princess Allura, Paladins of Voltron: on behalf of the Qijitii court, I offer our most sincere apologies for your toils.”

 

Keith clenched his fists, biting his lip as he regarded the Court with a steely gaze.

 

“Your concern is appreciated,” he grit out, forcing a smile, “but we’re here to see if you know anything about what attacked us.”

 

“ _Keith!”_ Allura hissed under her breath, fixing him with an admonishing glare.

 

“To my understanding,” he continued, pointedly ignoring Allura and turning to face the rest of the members in the audience, “an entity of unknown origin that somehow knew Shiro’s name appeared at a Qijitii mate selection conference—an event sanctioned and solely attended by members of the Qijitii Alliance—put three of us in the infirmary without so much as touching us, and no one here has _any idea_ what we were dealing with.”

 

“You’ll have to excuse him,” interjected Lance, clasping the red paladin nervously on the shoulder, “Keith’s still recovering from what happened—“  

 

“No matter: the half-breed’s forwardness is appreciated,” declared Rorix, rising from their seat, “and seems to have revealed a misunderstanding on our part.”

 

Keith rose an eyebrow.

 

“You see, given the nature of your colleagues’ injuries and the manner in which the intruders managed to appear and escape without detection, we assumed that you had also come to the conclusion that they were Galra Druids.”

 

…

_“So how are we going to get the Qijitii comfortable enough to tell us what they know?” asked Pidge, typing furiously on her laptop. “We obviously can’t let on as much as we currently know, but at the same time conveying complete ignorance might seem suspicious.”_

_“Our best bet is to follow their conversation as naturally as possible,” said Allura. “If they come up with excuses, then we need to remember to take some time to consider their answers before denying the possibilities outright. Furthermore, it might play to our advantage to convey an imbalanced power structure within our group: it might lead the Qijitii into a false sense of security and get them to divulge more than they would ordinarily.”_

_…_

“We initially followed the same line of thinking,” said Allura, looking to both Keith and Lance, “but these entities are unlike any druids we’ve encountered before: they were able to inflict pain without contact or any other visibly physical manifestation of energy.”

 

Rorix’s expression remained neutral. “Surely in all of your travels you’ve encountered at least one sentient race with similar abilities?”

 

“None that have ever targeted us so directly,” continued Keith. “Virtually every druidic entity we’ve faced has held a defensive role in the Galra Empire, and never confronted us directly unless they had the home field advantage: we always figured it was because they required direct access to a source of purified quintessence, but there’s no telling how much progress they’ve made in making it easier to transport for immediate use.”

 

…

 

_“Shiro is right: if we’re going to get anything out of them, we need to convey a similar degree of ignorance,” added Coran. “The Qijitii are a proud people, and it is likely that they will want to convey some sort of assurance to the members of their alliance that they are at an advantage. They will point out holes in your information, and you have to resist the urge to correct or clarify if they try to lead you astray.”_

 

…

 

“Perhaps the cause of the damage was synthetic rather than organic, or a combination of the two,” added the Alphe. “You are familiar with Olkari technology, correct?”

 

“Of course,” said Lance, though he itched to say more: reciting how the massive teludav they’d created in collaboration with the Olkari had been instrumental in Zarkon’s takedown the year before was among one of his more effective persuasion techniques in getting free drinks during shore leave. “We’re still running some tests and trying to figure out exactly what happened last ni—sorry, yesterquaint,” he added, nodding at both Allura and Keith. “We’ll scan our data banks for known matches to anything out of the ordinary that we find on Hunk, Pidge, and Shiro.”

 

…

 

_Allura summoned a blinking screen, using her finger to scroll through the data. She squinted, frowning as the Altean characters flashed across the page._

 

_“We completed full scans of everyone twice prior to decontamination,” she read. “Whatever attacked us didn’t leave a trace.”_

_“Damn,” muttered Keith, reflexively clenching his fist._

_“It was a long shot, in any case,” said Coran, twirling the end of his moustache. “It never did touch us, and the Qijitii ballroom is equipped with one of the best air filtration systems this side of the Andromeda: it’s the only way they can prevent the spread of airborne pathogens across the alien races.”_

_“I still can’t believe that I don’t remember much past dinner,” Shiro murmured, running a hand through his white forelock. “I—“_

_Pidge shot out of her seat like a rocket, practically sprinting for the door as an unintelligible string of words tumbled from her mouth. Within seconds she was sprinting down the hallway, leaving everyone to scratch their heads._

_“Did she need to throw up again?” muttered Lance, peering up from his spot on the couch to watch Pidge almost trip and fall as she rounded the hallway corner._

_“There’s a trash can right by the door, genius.”_

_“You can’t blow chunks in a_ mesh trash can _, Keith, who even—? Oh, that’s right: we’re talking about the guy that has a permanent porta potty outside of his desert shack—“_

_“It’s an_ outhouse _, Lance: there’s no plumbing in the middle of the goddamn desert!”_

_“Boys,” Shiro warned, though his voice lacked the command and authority it typically had. The black paladin pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing the heel of his prosthetic hand into his temple. Keith and Lance halted their argument immediately, but Allura could still see the silent feud bouncing between the two of them as they both crossed their arms and muttered an apology—more to Shiro than each other._

_Pidge’s footsteps became louder as she sprinted back down the hall, some wires clenched tightly in her other fists and what looked like an Olkari cube zooming beside her._

_“Is that—?”_

_“Yes, I modified some Olkari tech to make a spy device that uses Jade’s cloaking technology and can filter through audio files,” Pidge interrupted, jamming one of the cords into her headphone jack and snatching the hovering cube out of the air. “I was testing the thing out to see if I could get any intel on Lotor’s movement or where Matt and my dad could possibly be. Started going through the results last night, but I was so out of it that I don’t think I processed anything.”_

_“Pidge, you realize that—”_

_“Hold on, Allura: I’ll sit through the lecture later,” she interrupted, her fingers dancing across the keyboard as she accessed the program from her laptop, scrolling through the options until she found the one she wanted. Her gaze turned stern when she tore her eyes away from the screen to look at Shiro._

_“You have footage of what happened,” he surmised, eyes widening in shock._

_“I have some audio,” she confirmed. “But I don’t want to play it unless you’re comfortable with me doing so. It was a bad night for all of us, and I think the amnesia played in your favor for this one.”_

_His gaze became stony. “It’s okay,” he murmured, though he shifted in his seat as if he was preparing himself to get slapped across the face._

_Pidge looked like she didn’t believe him, but as she glanced over her typed transcript again something else worth mentioning stood out to her. She took off her glasses, rubbing them on her shirt as she mumbled something._

_“What?”_

_“There’s also, uh, some private conversation in there,” she admitted, flushing lightly as she lowered the screen of her laptop ever so slightly. The way Allura stiffened didn’t get past Coran, and he made a point of glancing between Shiro and the princess as he raised an eyebrow. Lance didn’t miss her returned warning glance, and had to cover his mouth with both hands to keep himself from making an inappropriate comment. Keith, as per usual, was completely out of the loop, tugging at his collar impatiently as he sighed._

_“Well then just play what’s relevant,” he said gruffly, looking at Pidge suspiciously. “And I think everyone is in agreement that that thing is_ not _to be deployed around the Castle.”_

_Pidge grimaced. “Oh, totally. Trust me: I don’t really want to know what a bunch of teenage boys do with their free time around here when they think no one’s watching.”_

_Lance snorted behind his hands, but Pidge ignored him in favor of quickly editing the file down, hovering the cursor over the “PLAY” button when she had finished._

_The green paladin gave Shiro a wary look, waiting for him to nod._

_“Okay, Pidge: I’m ready.”_

_Click._

…“Champion! My, my, it’s been a few feebs, has it not?”…

 

_Shiro felt like his stomach had fallen through the floor._

_“Stop the recording!” Allura demanded, the twin pink crescents on her cheeks pulsing with light as the black paladin’s eyes glazed over, his chest heaving with effort as the hyperventilation set in. Pidge complied immediately, though she didn’t quite process that she’d also had a physical reaction to the recording until Keith and Lance were at her side reaching out to stabilize her trembling form._

_“Are you okay?” asked the blue paladin, rubbing her back vigorously as she instinctively curled into his chest, making herself as small as possible in his arms._

_“M’sorry,” she managed to squeak out, taking a deep breath to center herself. “F-for a second it all came back and—“_

_She shivered, forcing herself to take deep breaths as she came down from the momentary panic. Meanwhile, Allura was running her fingers through Shiro’s scalp, whispering soft reassurances as his breathing began to slow down to normal again. Keith stood by, his face etched with concern as the black paladin’s eyes flitted back and forth as if searching for something lurking in the shadows._

_Coran’s brow furrowed: he’d heard of races that could activate sensations through sound waves before, but that ability almost never translated across recordings. A reaction as visceral as this from a simple recording must have involved magic, and strong magic at that._

_He hadn’t been pondering the idea long when Shiro’s eyes returned to focus on the princess’, her kindness and patience radiating out in waves as the pallor left his cheek. The royal advisor turned to make some notes on the floating interface, pointedly looking away like he has intruded on something private._

_Another moment passed before Shiro finally spoke._

_“Harpeyii.”_

_“What?”_

_The others looked at Shiro expectantly, seeking elaboration, while Pidge seemed to have another revelation and set to furiously typing once more._

_“Pidge—?”_

_“Hold on a tick,” she interrupted, holding up a finger. “Do you all remember the Qijitii that announced our titles on the first night?”_

_A few nods._

_“I picked this up during the time of the attack,” she murmured, fiddling with the control to reduce the background noise. “I hadn’t thought much of it at first, but…”_

_She pressed play._

“…My Lord, the Harpeyii has entered the paladins’ vicinity…”

_Pidge looked up from her computer, her expression stony._

 

…

 

“We graciously accept any further word the Court feels it appropriate to offer regarding the assault,” added Allura, bowing low in humility. “If what attacked us operates in league with the Galra Empire, then they are already informed that we cannot form Voltron without all five paladins present. We would have neither resource nor opportunity to defend your homes: Lotor lacks honor, and would see us all struck down toward his villainous ends.”

 

The crowd hummed at the news, though the royal members of the Qijitii Court remained steadfast in gesture and tongue.

 

“We will see that your desires are given action,” announced Rorix, eyeing the each of them before turning to address the hall.

 

“Let it be known that our honored guests are to be spared no hospitality: have you but even a glimmer of knowledge regarding the past quintant’s events or the entities that moved the assailant to action, Princess Allura and her paladins are to know of it before Helia sinks beneath the horizon.”

 

…

 

_“Harpeyii? I have never heard of a sentient species by that name,” said Coran, pressing a hand to his temple in thought, “and if memory serve correct then none of the records that Pidge has intercepted over the past feeb have made mention of such creatures. How did you come to know of them?”_

_Shiro tensed, his metal fist clenching and unclenching in reflex._

_“They managed the Galra POW prisons and gladiator rings under the Druids’ command.”_

…

“Now: turn your minds from sour thoughts,” announced the Bete, raising their arms above their head, “for this night kin Rorix will select from those among you beloved spouse and ally!”

 

The crowd cheered, clinking their glasses together in celebration as the music swelled to presence around them. Allura bowed to the Court as she took to their table, Keith and Lance not far behind.

 

…

 

_“What?!”_

_Shiro nodded solemnly. “I’d had experience with them prior to my escape, but didn’t know much about them until Ulaz freed me. In his time undercover, he’d managed to discover that the Harpeyii and the Druids had established a tight-knit system for controlling and subduing prisoners. It was his understanding that the Harpeyii were the results of primitive Druid experiments to create Robeasts: an attempt at engineering super-soldiers to move toward the Galra Empire’s cause, made from—from prisoners’ harvested cells and—“_

_Shiro glanced at his metal arm, a shiver travelling down his spine._

_“No,” whispered Coran, while Allura concealed a shuddering breath behind her hands. Pidge and Lance looked like they were going to be sick, while a bubbling fury kindled in Keith’s eyes. “Such activities are taboo: they have been banned by the Greater Second Quadrant Alliance for millennia, punishable by death in some regions—“_

_“Those Druid shits_ _don’t give a_ flying fuck _about rules or taboo!” Keith hissed, fists clenched so tight that his nails dug white crescents into his palms, his entire body shaking with fury. “Do you think that an organization that calls for and participates in the annihilation of_ entire planets _is ruled by morals?!”_

_“Keith—“_

_“NO! I’m fucking_ sick _and_ tired _of dancing around this, Shiro! We defeated Zarkon, but his influence remains! We call ourselves the defenders of the universe, and yet we attend parties and meetings while the gladiator rings and prisons still exist! We cannot even move against the Qijitii and free the dozens they hold as breeding vessels so that their people can have political advantage! How can we fight for freedom from Galra oppression and allow this to happen? These people would work with the—the_ things _that sawed off half your arm sooner than they would aid us!”_

_He stood panting, hunched over as if wild and rabid, fingers clenched about the hilt of his Marbora blade._

_“Hey, Keith, no one here disagrees with you, dude!” exclaimed Lance, fearlessly approaching the red paladin to stay his hands. Keith flinched at Lance’s touch, but made no move to strike when he pried his fingers from the blade. “This entire situation has been incredibly frustrating, but we have to be smart about the moves we make against the Galra and their allies. There are a lot of innocent people that can get caught in the crosshairs, and even then we still don’t know much about the things that attacked our team. We won’t be doing anyone any good if we both end up in healing pods.”_

_“Lance is right,” said Allura, though her gaze toward Keith held palpable sympathy. “We must proceed carefully if we desire to see a positive outcome and future opportunities to inflict blows upon the Empire. When we have gained more stable footing and our freed allies have had the chance to recuperate and train, the Voltron Alliance will see the slave trade and its beneficiaries fall.”_

_Keith grit his teeth, but his figure slackened at the Princess’s words._

_“Fine,” he muttered icily, pulling his hands from Lance’s grasp, “But if we cross paths with the Harpeyii again—“_

_“You will see yourself and your teammates to safety,” finished Shiro, his voice hovering between command and desperation. “That is an order, and I will hear no more of it. Am I understood?”_

_The red paladin’s eyes flashed with hurt for a brief moment, his cheeks burning in embarrassment at being addressed in such a way in front of his team, yet he yielded without protest._

_“I understand.”_

_The guilt in Shiro’s visage remained for but a moment, vanishing as he turned to Allura, Lance, and Pidge._

_“Then we shall see our footing stabilized,” he declared. “Pidge, does the device you made have the ability to access digital records?”_

_“I can remotely guide the C.U.B.E. to hack into a hard drive,” she confirmed, adjusting her glasses. “What are you thinking?”_

_“If our suspicions are confirmed and the Qijitii are working with the Druids, there’s sure to be records detailing their correspondence. If we can get our hands on those records, then we might not have to rely on a slip of the tongue to get the information that we need.”_

…

 

“Partake in the celebrations, but remain sober and vigilant,” Allura whispered, handing the red and blue paladins a glass each. “Pidge, what progress have you made with the data download?”

 

“It took me awhile to maneuver the C.U.B.E. to slip past their cyber-security,” she replied, her voice tinny and metallic through the radio connection in Allura’s earrings, “the translation module is very klunky, so I’ve been having trouble figuring out which data to copy. If I separate from the port for a re-charge, I’ll have to start all over.”

 

“Keith and I can try to manually charge the cube-thingie,” suggested Lance.

 

“Have you lost your mind?” hissed Keith. “If either of us is caught we’ll be made in a nanosecond!”

 

“It might be our only choice,” said Allura gravely. “Pidge, you mentioned earlier that the port is in one of the rooms adjacent to the kitchens, correct?”

 

Keith opened his mouth to protest, but Pidge’s reply interrupted him before he could.

 

“Yes, and it’s separated enough from the rest of the ballroom for it to be possible to complete the re-charge and slip back out undetected,” she confirmed. “Pretend you’re going to the bathroom or something.”

 

“And what if we’re caught?”

 

“Oh my _god_ , Keith: do I have to do everyth—you know what, just fake some heavy petting and act like you were secreting away to boink or something.”

 

Though the connection wasn’t perfect, there was no mistaking Coran’s voice in the background asking what a ‘boink’ was (“Oh, yet another Earth ritual yet unknown to me, I presume! You must describe it in detail upon your return!”) and an odd choking noise that couldn’t have been anyone but Shiro.

 

“What the _fuck_ , Pidge!” squealed Lance, the tips of his ears blooming with redness. Keith spluttered, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “As if,” before Pidge’s voice rang through the comms.

 

“If you don’t like my suggestions then use your goddamned imagination,” she replied tersely. “Just get in that room and connect the charger to the external port on the C.U.B.E. in the next five minutes. I have a mountain of data to sort through and Hunk isn’t here to help me troubleshoot, so—“

 

“Fine, fine, okay! _Sheesh_ , woman,” said Lance, holding his hands up in surrender as if Pidge could see him. “Allura will schmooze while Keith and I re-charge your battery-sucking robot thingie.”

 

“Thank you~” said Pidge sweetly, the vehement tapping of her fingers mashing the keyboard a humorous juxtaposition to her voice. The comm clicked as the transmission ended.

 

“See it done,” said Allura, giving both paladins a pat on the shoulder before slipping away to join the crowd, a diplomatic smile shielding her visage.

 

Lance chuckled good-naturedly, raising his glass to clink with Keith’s before taking a long swig.

 

“We live with such bossy women,” he muttered jokingly, shaking his head with a smile.

 

“We live with bossy people in general,” Keith retorted, rolling his eyes as he stared at the beverage in his hand and gave it a tentative sniff.

 

“C’mon, Keith, try it! This stuff is _so_ much better than nunvill,” he declared, smacking his lips together loudly as he swirled the beverage in hand. “It’s a shame that most of it is going to end up in your hair.”

 

Keith had barely a second to process Lance’s words before some of the amber-colored liquid had sloshed from the glass and onto its unsuspecting target. The blue paladin cackled as it dripped in sparse rivulets down his breastplate, seeping into the dark fabric of the bodysuit around his collarbone.

 

“Some sharpshooter you are,” joked Keith, taking a sip from is own glass. “Most of that ended up on my armor.”

 

“Well your hair is so greasy that it caused a glare and threw off my aim,” Lance retorted, flicking a few droplets into Keith’s face with his fingers.

 

The red paladin responded by pouring the rest of his drink into Lance’s breastplate, the neck guards funneling the chilled liquid down the bodysuit. He held back a shriek as the beverage’s slow trickle worked its way through the suit, shoving playfully at Keith as he tried to seize Lance’s own unfinished glass in an attempt to repeat the action.

 

“Well now your hair is greasier than mine!” Keith laughed, a smirk playing at his lips as he successfully snatched the drink from Lance’s grasp, but the blue paladin knocked away his hands just in time for the rest of it to spill into Keith’s breastplate. He made an odd noise as the cold bloomed across the surface of his skin, swearing in Korean under his breath as he felt the suit become sticky.

 

“HAH! Karma’s a bitch, Kogane!”

 

“It sure is: it’s your turn to do laundry this week, McClain!”

 

“Aw, come _on_ —!“

 

They continued to laugh and bicker as they moved with purpose toward the storage closet, eyes occasionally flitting toward the crowd to see whether anyone was tracking their movements. As they’d expected, most of the guests had swarmed Allura to provide their own account of the previous night’s events (and, as Coran suspected, seek non-urgent favors from Voltron: someone always needed their planet’s garbage hurled into space or an asteroid belt cleared out to open up parking for another space mall). They slipped soundlessly into the room, the blue lights on their suits immediately flaring to life as the darkness shrouded their figures.

 

Lance fumbled for a button on the inside of his collar to activate a comm link. “Okay, Pidge, we’re in.”

 

“ _Finally_ ,” she mumbled, the connection now even spottier behind the additional wall. “I programmed all of the lights in there to shut off or dim so no one would be able to see me hacking through the monitors: with any luck the Qijitii will just think that there’s a power outage. Gimme a second, I’m getting the C.U.B.E. ready to transmit a signal so that you can find it…”

 

A green light flashed in the corner of the room, illuminating the charging dock of the small device. Keith wasted no time in pulling the charger out of a compartment in the forearm of his armor and padding over to plug it in, letting out a sigh of relief when the terminal connected without any trouble.

 

“Aaand not a moment to soon! Good work, you two,” Pidge chirped, continuing to plug away on her laptop. “Give it about ten minutes to charge, and you can be on your way back to the party.”

 

“Roger that,” said Keith, settling against the wall to give his legs a break. “We’ll probably just chill here until then.”

 

The comm clicked, and Pidge went back to her hacking.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the work ‘chill’ before, Keith,” teased Lance, taking a spot next to the red paladin against the cold metal. “But then again, you’re in better spirits than usual right now. I’m glad to see you’re doing okay.”

 

Keith flushed, thanking every star in the sky that the room was too dimly lit to betray the color on his cheeks. “I would be even better if I didn’t have not-nunvil drying in my suit, but—thanks. I’m feeling a bit better now, too.”

 

Lance chuckled, pulling at the fabric of his own suit. “Yeah, I’m beginning to think that we should have faked needing to use the restroom a different way now. This stuff is _so_ sticky, and probably terrible for my skin…”

 

“Your pores will be fine,” said Keith, shaking his head as he chuckled, but the laugh came out sounding more like a sound of resignation rather than one of humor.

 

And Lance—being the people-person he was—picked up on it immediately.

 

“Hey, man…I know it’s not really my place to ask, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but what’s on your mind? You were really upset this morning.”

 

Keith tensed for a moment, but it didn’t take long for his shoulders to slump in defeat.

 

“I…I don’t talk about it with that many people,” he muttered, “Why I was so keyed up this morning, I mean.”

 

“That’s okay: it’s your story to tell or not tell.”

 

“…Not really.”

 

_Damn_ , now he was even _more_ curious.

 

“Whenever I asked about my mom, my dad would tell me stories about his side of the family. My grandfather was _talbukja_ —when he was fifteen he fled North Korea during the famine with his brother and two sisters. They escaped to mainland China and travelled south to Thailand, but were caught before they reached port in Bangkok. My grandfather managed to escape onto a commercial freighter bound for Panama, but he never saw his siblings again.

 

He eventually got to Panama, and headed north with a group of Guatemalan men and women who were travelling to the US for work. When they reached Mexico they hired a _coyote_ to get them across the border into Laredo, but the bastard double-crossed them and left them in the desert to die.

 

My grandmother—who had been roped into her father’s nutjob border patrol mercenary troop—found him in a ditch, severely dehydrated and malnourished. When her uncle threatened to take him to _la migra_ she shot him in the leg, stole his truck, and drove the both of them to the nearest hospital that wouldn’t deport illegals, which was more than an hour away. She’d had her driver’s license for all of two weeks when she shot up the 59 Freeway at 90 miles an hour with a half-dead Korean boy in the passenger seat.”

 

Keith laughed, running his hand through his bangs. “He woke up a week later babbling in Korean about a crazy girl with red hair and a lead foot, but she’d been booked and sent to juvie for grand theft auto, assault and battery, and speeding. Thankfully the judge that saw her case wasn’t a total dickhead and let her off with community service, and the second she was released she was right back at his side.

 

He ended up being adopted by a Japanese-American couple in Houston, but never lost contact with her: they taught one another their home languages over the phone, took the bus to see each other on weekends, and sent each other letters for years. They fell in love, of course, and ran off to Las Vegas to elope.”

 

The light emitting from Keith’s arm guard caught on the planes of his face, revealing the soft contour of a wistful smile. The expression, however, was fleeting, and his steely resolve returned like a dark cloud over clear skies.

 

“Grandpa Kogane was a spokesperson for the liberation of North Korea for years: he went all around the country telling his story at colleges, church groups, human rights organizations—anyone that would listen. He even went to DC several times to appeal to the government to intervene and see North Korea freed from the influence of the Kims, but there was always something more pressing for Congress to squabble about—9/11, Al-Qaeda, ISIS—so he tried to gain a voice through the news. It figures that the media was more concerned with Trump’s Twitter account and viral videos than they were about the situation in North Korea: no one really cared until they started testing missiles and killing white American students, and even then they never focused on the Korean people who had been toiling in labor camps for generations, or the defectors that had been caught and tortured. They were all forgotten because something else was always more important—someone else’s voice was always louder.”

 

Lance didn’t know what to say; what he even _could_ say: everything that Keith had said, the way he’d acted earlier that morning, why he’d been so upset at having the resources and support to help but not being able to act on it—it all made sense now.

 

He opened his mouth to offer comfort and support, but the muffled sounds of Allura’s voice echoing through the comm link drew their attention away.

 

“…spilled some _akjé_ nectar on his armor, so Lance accompanied him to the washroom to see himself clean. If I might ask, why do you request Keith’s presence? If he was too blunt before the Court then I must apolo—“

 

“It was no matter,” replied Rorix, sounding smug and devious even as their voice was garbled by the weakened connection. “I quite admired the red paladin’s…forwardness. In fact, I would see that he is _very_ well cared for under my roof as beloved mate.”

 

Keith’s eyes widened in fear at the Qijitii’s predatory tone, desperately seeking Lance’s gaze for help. Though his heart felt like it had dropped through his stomach and splattered onto the ground, the blue paladin moved to action, instinctively wrapping his arms around the other boy as if they alone could shield him from his apparent fate.

 

“Mate?” said Allura, her voice gaining a frantic edge as Rorix continued to push past her. “But Keith is too young for marriage by his home planet’s standards! Surely another has—“

 

“His scent tells me otherwise,” purred Rorix, making a sound that may have been the licking of lips. “The boy is ripe for picking, and he yet uses trick and illusion to steal away from sight…”

 

Keith had begun to hyperventilate, a soft sob bubbling in his throat. Even when facing Zarkon himself head-on he had not appeared this terrified.

 

“They’re going to find me,” he whimpered, fingers grasping onto the fabric of Lance’s suit. “Oh, God…Lance, please don’t let them take me away, _please_ —“

 

The blue paladin racked his brain for a plan, doing his best to keep Keith calm as Rorix stalked ever closer. Allura’s calm visage had almost completely slipped by now, torn away by the Qijitii’s unbridled desires and demands, and in that moment he understood why Allura had done what she had to save Shiro from a similar fate.

 

And then it hit him.

 

“Keith, buddy,” Lance whispered, steeling his breath as he released his friend from embrace to hold him by the shoulders. “I’m going to have to do something that you’re probably not going to like, but I need you to follow my lead, okay? I need you to play along. Nod and let me know that you understand.”

 

Keith gulped, holding back tears as he gave a furtive nod.

 

“Good, okay. Everything’s going to be okay,” Lance whispered, cupping Keith’s cheek with a tenderness he didn’t know he possessed. His heart nearly stopped when Keith leaned into his touch, his eyes half-lidded and glassy as he stared at his lips, already seeming to know what they had to do.

 

Before he could think on it further Lance leaned forward, closed his eyes, and—

 

 

_\- - - - - - -_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A/N: //dabs as I’m sucked into the void//_
> 
> _Excuse the headcanons: the situation surrounding Keith’s paternal grandparents is not as thoroughly researched as I wanted it to be, but the story was begging to be let out so I welcomed the respite from my usually frustrating and time-consuming writer’s block. If you have any suggestions for edits or clarifications in that section, please let me know._
> 
> _In other news, Klance owns my soul and the Season 3 trailer killed me, so there’s that_
> 
> _Also, we’re getting to Year 3 real soon! I have some exciting stuff to introduce to all my loyal readers ~~ Thanks for your continued support!!_


	17. Year 2 (part 13)

**Year II (Part 13)**

**Content warnings: sex is mentioned in conversation, and Keith and Lance continue their…heavy petting.**

 

“Give it about ten minutes to charge, and you can be on your way back to the party.”

 

“Roger that: we’ll probably just chill here until then.”

 

Pidge shut off the comm link with Keith, closing out of the window so that she could continue focusing on the C.U.B.E. upload. Now that the device was getting some charge she could _finally_ get out of power save mode and make some headway: her program had cracked the Qijitii’s encryption wide open, and all of the secrets contained within it spilling forth not long after. So long as the boys could keep everything connected, they’d be good to go and the mission would be a success.

 

She sat back in her chair and propped her feet up on the table, letting out a deep sigh as the machine continued its work. Just as she was about to close her eyes and have a cat-nap she felt Shiro’s hand lightly squeezing her shoulder, a crooked smile on his lips.

 

“Nice work, Pidge,” he said, plopping down on a couch nearby as he smoothed his fringe back. The poor man was exhausted and stressed out beyond measure, and his anxieties had yet to quell since Lance, Keith, and Allura’s departure. “Though maybe next time ease up a bit on the language?”

 

The girl barked out a laugh, flexing her toes in her boots. “Were you more concerned about ‘goddamn’ or ‘boink’?”

 

“Pidge—“

 

“Yes, yes, tell me more about this ‘boink!’” said Coran, who had since emerged onto the bridge with several space juice pouches underneath his arm, handing one to each of the humans. Shiro looked like he was ready to hurl himself out of an airlock, but Pidge had no reservations talking of such things: it was completely natural, after all.

 

“It’s a colloquialism for sex,” she explained simply, ignoring Shiro’s muffled groan as she stuck the straw into the pouch with practiced ease.

 

“ _Pidge_ —“

 

“Similar to ‘doing the do’ and ‘banging’ then? Fascinating that you Earthlings have so many ways to say a single thing!”

 

Shiro opened his mouth, but closed it again when he realized that he was far too tired to deal with the issue presently.

 

“We’ll continue this conversation later,” he promised, though through his thinly-veiled exhaustion the words sounded more pleading than threatening. _Or even better, never mention it again._ “I’m going to go take a nap. Let me know if there are any more developments.”

 

Pidge rolled her eyes as Shiro turned his back, slumping even further into her chair as she blew a few strands of her bangs out of her eyes.

 

“We’ll continue this conversation later,” she mocked, folding her arms sullenly. “He’s not even ten years older than us and still chides us as if we were children.”

 

Coran laughed, though the way he looked at her signaled that he wasn’t unsympathetic to her woes.

 

“Such is the burden that the youngest of the lot bears,” he said, pulling up a chair next to her. “No matter that your mind and tongue are sharper than a garflax’s horn.”

 

“I’m going to assume that you were complementing me,” she muttered, quirking a small smile. “It really is unfair, though: Shiro barely polices Keith and Lance for all of their recklessness and stupidity, and yet when I’m barely even toeing the line he scolds me. It doesn’t take a genius to see that he holds a different standard for me, and I’m afraid with the way Keith and Lance worship him that they’ll start treating me differently, too.”

 

She tucked her chin into her knees, wrapping her hands around her calves.

 

“I’m just glad that Hunk doesn’t do that code switching bullshit with me,” she continued. “He’s never treated me differently because I’m younger or because I’m not a guy. Even after I told him about the autism thing he just asked if there was anything he did that made me uncomfortable and left it at that.”

 

Coran hummed his acknowledgment.

 

“You miss him.”

 

It wasn’t a question, but Pidge found herself nodding anyway, squeezing her eyes shut to stave off the impending tears.

 

“You should go visit him in the med bay,” said the Altean advisor, his voice calm and reassuring against the mechanical hum of the harsh blue lights that illuminated the bridge. “That’s—well, that was one of the reasons I came up here, as a matter of fact: I checked over his readings, and it looks like he’s due to be released in the next half-varga.”

 

Coran chuckled as Pidge’s face lit up like a not-so-distant star, a bit of life he hadn’t realized absent returning to her eyes as they crinkled in the corners.

 

“Go on: I’ll oversee the rest of the data transfer,” he continued, gesturing toward the computer. “You should be there when Hunk wakes up.”

 

Pidge gave him the quickest and tightest of hugs before she disappeared down the hall.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

He was definitely looking better.

 

Pidge rested her fingers on the glass, tracing the Altean symbols as she attempted to decipher some of the simpler terms and phrases. Given the particularly Draconian nature of the castle’s language education software, she had yet to make the progress she desired in this regard, but she was learning a bit more every day.

 

Of course, it didn’t help at all that the ‘translations’ for the terms of vital stats were choppy at best: Alteans’ body temperatures were about three degrees Celsius cooler than the average human, and their chameleon-like abilities (which, to Pidge’s fascination, were possible due to the presence of a mitochondrion-like organelle in Altean somatic cells) made their body chemistry so variable that the machine’s calibration might not have recognized subtler changes in humans. As she’d come to learn over the past year or so, the only reading that would glean any useful information was the countdown to release.

 

Which (if she was translating the numbers correctly) was maybe five ticks.

 

Four ticks.

 

Three

 

Two

 

In all of her excitement it only occurred to her now that maybe she’d need some help getting him out so that he didn’t just pitch forward and—

 

The pod hissed open, a thin layer of condensation prickling at the glass as the compartment depressurized and released its charge.

 

Of course, five foot eleven and two hundred-something pounds was no match for the smallest paladin, and Pidge gave a squeaky death-scream as she collapsed under his weight and girth.

 

Thankfully, Keith had taught her how to fall correctly, but having someone subsequently fall on top of her was a completely different matter: the air was instantly knocked from her lungs, their attempts at re-inflation severely limited by a weight sitting on her chest.

 

It took her a moment to gather herself, at which point she finally allowed her head to roll toward her sternum to assess the situation.

 

Hunk was still emerging from cryo-sleep, though he’d had enough sense to somewhat prop himself up on his forearm on one side of Pidge’s body so that he was no longer crushing her beneath him. To her relief her body had only broken the fall to Hunk’s face and chest, while his legs and the lower half of his torso had managed to land on the floor between her outstretched legs.

 

His cheek pressed against the soft swell of her chest as he slowly blinked into consciousness, his lips flapping uselessly for a moment before he finally regained control of his tongue.

 

“Where am—what happened—?”

 

He blinked blearily, nuzzling his head into the warmth. Everything else was so hard and cold, but this was—this was nice.

 

“I thought I told you not to touch my equipment,” Pidge snarked, chuckling as Hunk grunted in confusion.

 

She could practically feel his eyes snapping open, the mortification coming off of him in droves as he realized what he was doing.

 

“No, don’t rush to get up; don’t worry about it,” Pidge said dismissively, and in all honesty she really did not care. Like, not even a little. Her best friend had fallen out of a healing pod and nuzzled her boob. So what? She must have nuzzled his moobs at least a few times at this point with all of their hugs. At her words, Hunk exhaled in relief.

 

“If I had been Lance you would have shoved me out of the air lock by now,” Hunk mumbled, laughing nervously and trying not to move his face too much.

 

“Perhaps,” she replied simply, giving as much of a shrug as she could given her current situation, “But you’re not Lance. He would have made this weird, and unintentionally falling on top of someone while coming out of cryo-sleep isn’t inherently weird unless someone _makes_ it weird.”

 

Hunk had to chuckle at that. “What was that term you like to use? ‘Heterosexual nonsense?’”

 

“Precisely.”

 

They sat—or lay, rather—in silence for about a minute. Pidge rested the back of her head on the tile lest she strain her neck, staring up at the sterile white ceiling as her breathing slowed down. In all honesty she quite enjoyed Hunk’s head on her chest: he was warm and vast, like her favorite weighted blanket sitting on the edge of her bunk back at the Garrison, and she’d missed that sense of security.

 

“Hey, Pidge?”

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Thanks for being here. And not—not just as a human pillow,” he clarified when Pidge chuckled at his words.

 

“Of course,” she replied. “You would do the same for me. Or for any of us, really—“

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Pidge froze on the question, holding her tongue as the automatic _“I’m doing fine, how about you?”_ bubbled up to obfuscate her true sentiments. If she was being completely honest, Pidge wasn’t ‘fine’—she was approaching it step by step, though, and with each passing moment his big, warm, beautiful brain was coaxing her own out of hiding, nudging it back into the light with his soft voice and patient smile.

 

The girl grinned, ruffling Hunk’s hair affectionately in lieu of a hug.

 

“I’m getting there.”

 

 

\- - - - - - -

 

 

Keith’s lips were soft.

 

Pursed, and plush, and velvety smooth, his breath pleasantly warm against Lance’s cheek as their mouths parted to draw in breath for but a moment before desperation overcame their need for air, pulling them back together with breathy sighs and contented hums.

 

Lance vaguely considered that something he was doing to save Keith from a life as a concubine shouldn’t be this pleasant, even if the boy whose tongue he was sucking into his mouth wasn’t by any means hard on the eyes…even so, he shouldn’t feel this _right_ ; kissing Keith ( _fake_ kissing Keith) shouldn’t make his heart swell and flutter—

 

No.

 

If anything it was the satisfaction at having beaten an entitled Qijitii asswipe at their own twisted game, gambling fates as if they were pocket change only to have the dice forsake them. It was really just a bonus that Keith happened to be ho—happened to be attractive.

 

Objectively speaking, of course.

 

Keith had a nice face. Keith had a pizza slice chin and probably didn’t shape his eyebrows as frequently as he should have, but his eyes were _so_ _fucking_ _pretty_ framed by those long lashes; his hair was the perfect length to tug and pull when Lance chased Keith’s pouty and outrageously cute little mouth that he’ll never admit he’s wanted to taste for quite some time now—

 

Aaaaand Keith was moaning against his lips—he _liked_ (NO, Lance, he was _pretending_ to like) the hair pulling, the kinky little shit—

 

Oh.

 

_Oh._

 

_Oh god not now, Lance_ , you _absolutely cannot_ get a hard-on while you’re (fake) making out with your teammate in a storage closet and waiting for a nasty, predatory fuck to walk in and see that the object of their desire was already _very happily_ (fake) taken, thank you very much—

 

He felt Keith’s gloved hands paw at his hips, and this time he couldn’t hold back a violent shudder as the shorter boy dug his fingers into Lance’s flesh and swung him around into the wall back-first, crying out in (fake?) pleasure as Keith massaged the clothed skin at his waist with his thumbs and _ohmygod he was gonna fucking cream his pants if this beautiful boy’s hands went any lower_ —

 

The door hissed open, a cacophony of sounds from the bustling ballroom swirling about their intertwined figures, but Lance’s ears yet rang with the sounds of Keith’s addicting little pants and moans; with the tender and fervent meeting of their lips and tongues—

 

“What is the _meaning_ of this?” boomed Rorix, their voice rattling the walls and pulling the two paladins apart. Keith flinched at the Qijitii’s chilling tone, glancing between the being’s piercing gaze and Allura’s fearful (and somewhat quizzical) visage as she appeared behind them.

 

Lance, however, seemed nonplussed: he looked to Keith again, leaning in for a quick peck in the corner of his lips that might have promised more under any other circumstances before he regarded Rorix, a calm smirk curving the corners of his mouth.

 

“Forgive us, Geme Rorix,” he purred, clasping Keith’s trembling hand in his own. “My husband and I cannot stand to be parted for long, and we have hardly had each other’s company over the last several quintants. We thought it best to maintain decorum and seek privacy—“

 

“Husband?” interrupted Rorix, as Allura behind them mouthed the very same and pressed them with astounded stare. “Under what authority, might I ask? Your Princess seemed unaware of your marriage, and neither of you bear a physical mark of union.”

 

It took Lance a moment to realize that Rorix was referring to their lack of rings, especially because the Lance inside his head was currently screaming about how much he had fucked up and how he couldn’t possibly wriggle his way out of this—

 

“Our union was overseen in secret by an Earth priestess in the holy city of Las Vegas,” Keith interjected, his heart hardly slowing down as he gazed into Lance’s blue eyes with what he hoped seemed to be a loving (and somewhat remorseful) look. “W-we feared that our marriage would be perceived as unprofessional given our ages and status as teammates and colleagues, so we kept it a secret and decided not to have rings.”

 

“So _that’s_ what’s been going on between you two!” exclaimed Allura, and truth be told neither Keith nor Lance could tell with certainty whether her surprise and smugness weren’t entirely genuine. She clapped her hands together, wearing a very diplomatic smile as she regarded Rorix with an apologetic look. “I had _suspected_ that these two were closer than they’d let the rest of us believe—and here I was, thinking that they were silently kindling unspoken feelings for one another for the better part of a feeb!”

 

Though they were clearly less than pleased, Rorix managed a neutral smile in return.

 

“How… serendipitous. The halls of the Castle of Lions must have a way of inspiring passion in its denizens,” they said evenly, eyes flashing as they rested on Keith and Lance’s intertwined fingers. “It really is a wonder that any of you managed to disentangle yourselves from your lovers long enough to accomplish all that you have.”

 

Keith had half a thought to ask how much free time Rorix had to do anything important when they had a house full of concubines, but Lance had seemed to sense his agitation and brought the red paladin’s knuckles to his lips, flashing a watery smile that made Keith feel weak in his knees.

 

“We manage,” said Lance, his eyes never leaving Keith’s, “Don’t we, love?”

 

“You know I’ve always got your back, sharpshooter,” he replied shakily, because _fuck_ _that wasn’t even a lie_ and it was _out in the open_ and had to keep up a good front and unfreeze to give Lance a kiss on the cheek. Of course the blue paladin just _had_ to change his angle at the last minute and Keith felt Lance’s pointy nose dig into his cheek before their lips collided again, warm and eager and _right_ and _for fuck’s sake Keith don’t get too attached to him, to this; this isn’t even real_ —

 

Allura cleared her throat loudly, receiving sheepish grins from her paladins after they’d separated with a tiny yet obscenely wet _pop_ that would haunt the both of them for weeks.

 

“It seems the Castle of Lions now has a pair of exhibitionists!” she declared, the slightest edge of annoyance causing the both of them to flush and pull apart wordlessly. “No matter: I will see Rorix out while you two clean up and wrap up your…spousal bonding activities. I’ll expect you both at my side in three doboshes.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” they replied in unison, Lance pulling a comb and a mirror seemingly out of nowhere while Keith accepted Allura’s daintily embroidered handkerchief as she waved it under his nose. She gave each of them a stern and calculating look before returning to the Qijitii monarch, looping her arm in theirs as she led them out of the control room.

 

“Come, Rorix: I absolutely _must_ tell you of my journey to Portokethelian with my late father…”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

About a varga later the pink, red, and blue paladins found themselves at the threshold of the castle once more, the last remnants of their composure and decorum ebbing away as they trudged inside. Keith and Lance had managed to maintain their charade through their farewells with the Qijitii Court, but as soon as the inquisitive looks no longer wandered their way the two had avoided each other’s gazes as if the meeting of their eyes would turn them both to stone. Neither had so much as spoken to one another during the entire journey back, and by the time the three of them were safely within the confines of the castle the tension had grown so palpable that Allura could almost taste the entropy brewing between them.

 

She turned to face them, summoning forth a visage that Pidge had aptly coined ‘the one that made Lance cry once’ (not to be confused with ‘the one that made Lance almost pee his pants’).

 

“ _Please_ tell me that you two aren’t actually married.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

[BONUS:]

 

“ _Really_ , Keith? ‘The holy city of Las Vegas’?”

 

“I would have thought you more concerned about the fact that your tongue was in my mou—“

 

_// INHUMAN SHRIEKING //_

 


	18. Year 2 (part 14)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: excessive klance PDA ;;;;;;;;;;)

**Year II (part 14)**

**Cavity-inducing klance fluff/T-rated steaminess ahead :D**

**Then some klangst, because why not?**

The both of them practically stumbled over one another to deny Allura’s suspicions: of course they _weren’t fucking married_ ; how could anyone who’d spent the past two years trapped in a spaceship with the both of them _possibly_ come to that conclusion—

 

Allura had thrown her hands up in defeat, proclaiming that it didn’t really matter at this point because they’d still have to pretend to be married regardless, sighing loudly enough to wake the dead before begrudgingly trudging to the main deck to debrief Shiro and Coran on their current situation. Her orders had been curt: shower, rest, get your ‘marriage’ back-story straight _(ha!)_ before tomorrow, and try not to kill one another in the process.

 

She’d left the both of them at the entrance to the castle to stew in the consequences of their actions. It took all of thirty ticks for the awkwardness to fester to the point that both of them screaming at each other at the top of their lungs would have been better, so Lance finally— _finally_ —conceded to ending their Mexican standoff with a long, drawn-out syllable.

 

“…Sooooooo.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Lance rubbed the back of his neck, determinedly staring into the floor as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Beside him, Keith was popping each of his knuckles individually, the _crack_ of his joints punctuating the pregnant silence.

 

“…Thank you for—for doing what you did back there,” Keith mumbled, looking up to give Lance the tiniest of smiles.

 

Lance balked, choking a little bit on his own spit when he chanced a glance at the other paladin, but instinct kicked in and he flashed Keith a cocky grin.

 

“Are you thanking me for saving your ass from that creep, or for thinking to wear my favorite strawberry chapstick this morning?” he quipped, trying his best to be suave even as his tongue (the same tongue he’d shoved in Keith’s mouth less than an hour ag— _fuck_ , we’re _not_ thinking about that right now, Lance) tripped over the words and his face flared an impressive shade of red. _God_ , this was _so_ embarrassing—he was usually a lot more charming with this kind of thing—

 

“Chapstick?”

 

_Of fucking course._

 

“Yeah, dude, it’s this stuff you put on your lips so they don’t crack and peel?”

 

“Why would I care about your chapstick?”

 

Lance groaned, slapping both of his palms to his forehead before he dragged them down his face.

 

“ _!Idiota!_ Because I _kissed you_! I. Put. My. Mouth. On. Your. Mou—“

 

“I _know_ what a kiss is!” Keith blurted, crossing his arms and hiding behind his bangs.

 

“Yeah, well didn’t you taste the strawberry?”

 

The red paladin stared at him blankly, mouth agape in confusion until he processed the words. He stiffened, recoiling further into his own body.

 

“I—I wasn’t focusing on that,” he muttered, feeling his skin grow hot about his ears and neck, silently praying that his hair and the collar of the paladin armor sufficiently obscured his embarrassment. Why did Lance care so much about it, anyway? Weren’t they supposed to be discussing an action plan for the next few days?

 

Lance’s shoulders slumped, a pit churning in his stomach—it was understandable that Keith’s mind had been on other things during the… _incident_ , but had he really not—?

 

_Maybe if I had another—?_

 

Keith clamped his mouth shut, swallowing the thought down before it could fight its way past his lips. They needed to think about other things right now. Things like—

 

“So how are we going to do this?” he choked out instead, praying that Pidge’s clinical nature with regard to such things had rubbed off at least a little on him. “We have one more day with the Qijitii, and with the way Rorix has been preying on us there’s no way we’re letting Pidge and Hunk go to the final ceremony. We’re going to have to, uh, keep up appearances—“

 

For the first time since being in the Qijitii court an hour ago Lance met his eyes, a killer smile curving his lip.

 

“You mean pretend to be husbands,” he said devilishly, wriggling his eyebrows.

 

“Husbands that, for lack of a better word, have closeted their relationship from the rest of the world for more than two years,” Keith mumbled.

 

“Which means that when we kiss in public again, it has to be a happy medium between ‘I haven’t ever done this in public’ and ‘I’m married to this person,’” Lance considered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

 

Keith felt his heart skip a beat.

 

“Who says we have to kiss in public?”

 

Lance held up a hand with three fingers, counting down the items as he listed them.

 

“Well first of all, we were ‘comfortable’ smooching in front of Rorix, and it would be strange if we didn’t kiss in public after that,” he said. “Second, our ‘back story’ is _hella_ shaky at best. If we can act the part the Qijitii will have less of a reason to suspect something has gone awry.”

 

“And the third?”

 

“Beating Rorix at their own game was _far_ more satisfying than anything else we’ve done in the past week,” he concluded, still sporting a smug smirk. “I want to see them squirm some more.”

 

Keith rolled his eyes: as far as Lance had come in the last year, he still loved to gloat.

 

“And how do you suppose we pull off this ‘happy medium’ that you speak of?”

 

Lance looked to the floor again, pointedly avoiding the other boy’s gaze.

 

“Well, how does anyone get better at anything, Mullet?”

 

Keith froze.

 

“You mean you want us to practice.”

 

“Yeah—well, I don’t _want_ to practice; it’s more like we kind of _need_ to practice, because back in that closet you were kissing me like a dying man and I’m pretty sure that’s not what we want to—to—“

 

Keith’s hand brushed against his cheek, his thumb tracing the line of Lance’s jaw. His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned in, rubbing circles against his cheek as he brought their faces together.

 

Lance inhaled sharply through his nose, eyes blown wide as Keith’s mouth tilted to cover his own, pressing insistently against his lips. Dark bangs tickled his forehead, soft and silky and so unlike the calloused hand that had migrated to caress his scalp behind the ear, groping and tugging and needy against his hair and

 

oh.

 

_Oh._

 

Keith’s shoulders finally slackened when Lance pressed forward, whimpering softly into the other boy’s mouth as he wrapped his skinny arms about Keith’s waist, leaning down ever so slightly so that he wouldn’t need to stand on his toes to reach him. Capitalizing upon the reduced difference in height, Keith tucked his chin in and pulled Lance’s body into his own, a gloved hand tracing the jut of his hipbone beneath the fabric of the flight suit.

 

This—? This was— _so_ much better than the desperate kisses they’d shared in the Qijitii supply closet an hour ago. This was languid, and serene, and warm and soft and _earnest_ and oh my _god_ —

 

And then it was over.

 

_Wow._ Holy _crow._

 

Keith looked away, bowing his head apologetically as Lance stared at him slack-jawed, fighting back the urge to question reality ( _god damnit_ , Slav) as the other boy opened his mouth to say something.

 

“That was good,” Lance found himself interjecting, his voice increasing in pitch despite all attempts to keep it neutral. “ _Really_ good.”

 

The red paladin gave him the tiniest of smirks. “It wasn’t my best,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully.

 

Oh my _god_ —

 

Just—tilt your head just a little bit more this time,” he breathed, their noses barely inches apart as he reached for Keith’s waist.

 

Keith complied, gently angling Lance’s head before he swept in and captured his lips again. The blue paladin opened his mouth in a silent gasp as Keith nibbled and kneaded his lips, making the softest of breathy noises in his throat when Lance began to languidly run his hands up and down the other boy’s sides.

 

“Keith, hold me—hold me closer—“

 

He pressed their stomachs together, smoothing away Keith’s bangs as their lips met halfway, gasping as something _needy_ began to throb in his abdomen, and _fuck_ , he was _gone_ , he was so, _so_ far gone now; there was no going back, no coming back from something like this; no way he’d ever look at this boy’s lips ever again and _not_ want to kiss them and bite them and trace them with his fingers; he’d never _not_ want Keith’s mouth on his neck, his collarbones, his chest, his stomach, his—

 

“Softly.”

 

And again, this time a chaste brushing of their mouths.

 

“Keith—“

 

Then another.

 

And another.

 

And another…

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Needless to say, no one in the Qijitii Court suspected a thing the next day.

 

The same could not be said for their friends, however, when Keith and Lance parted ways without speaking a word upon their return to the castle.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Hunk was on his way back from the lab when he heard muffled noises behind Lance’s door.

 

Despite his better judgment, the yellow paladin quietly padded up to the threshold, cupping a hand to his ear to pick up on the sounds.

 

In retrospect he probably should have been a bit more cautious about suspicious sounds coming from behind the closed door of a teenage boy’s room, but as relieved as he was to not hear, well, _that_ , he couldn’t say that the alternative was much better.

 

Was Lance—was Lance _crying_?

 

Hunk rapped his knuckles on the door, peering tentatively into the camera on the digital keypad to see if Lance would respond.

 

“Hey, buddy,” he said gently, aiming his voice into the tiny microphone adjacent to the screen. “It’s Hunk.”

 

The muffled sobs abruptly ceased, followed by the sound of soft footsteps and a nose being blown.

 

Lance was still sniffling when the automatic door slid open just a crack, his eyes red and puffy from the tears.

 

“Hey, ol’ Hunky Hunk,” he said shakily, the corners of his lips struggling to pull into a smile. “W-what’s up?”

 

The yellow paladin’s eyebrows knit together in consternation. “Lance, what’s going on? Did something happen tonight at the gala—?”

 

“No, no!” Lance interjected, his eyes momentarily going wide, but as the thought marinated in his mind he seemed to stand corrected.

 

“Well, at least, it didn’t have a lot to do with the gala. Not directly, I mean.”

 

Hunk gave his friend a pointed look, as if to dare him to spare the details. Lance sighed lightly, scratching the side of his head.

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

The yellow paladin softened, eyebrows knit in sympathy. “Do you need to talk it out?”

 

Lance nodded wordlessly, slumping into a gangly heap on his bed as he gestured for Hunk to take the comfy desk chair (he propped himself on his forearms on the backrest—a habit he’d picked up from Pidge). He ran a hand through his hair, biting his lip as he struggled to put his predicament into words, and was just about ready to give up and tell his friend that it wasn’t really a big deal when he met Hunk’s kind eyes.

 

“Start from the beginning, Lance.”

 

_Here goes nothing._

 

“Well, a lot happened while you were in cryo-sleep…”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

It hadn’t taken long for Hunk to migrate over to the bed and initiate a massage.

 

What? Lance’s posture was an absolute _travesty_ —when he’d found out it was because he had a veritable mountain climber’s basement full of knots in his back, Hunk couldn’t _not_ do something about it.

 

He dug his thumbs into Lance’s shoulders as his friend continued to tell the story, nodding and humming along.

 

“I mean, I think we fooled the Qijitii pretty good,” he said, laughing a little to himself as the not so distant memory resurfaced. “Rorix looked _pissed_ , and Allura was the picture of diplomacy as usual. I wouldn’t have known she was lying, and that kinda freaks me out a little…?”

 

Hunk laughed, rolling Lance’s head forward so he could access the knots in his neck. “I can only imagine the look she had on her face when she saw you two having a fakeout makeout in the closet,” he chuckled, warranting a whine from Lance. “Consider it payback for making her look like she didn’t know about everything happening under her roof.”

 

“You make it sound like she has our bathroom schedules,” Lance muttered, crossing his arms. “And I mean, we do have scheduled potty breaks during training, but still! As far as I’m concerned the only person she has a hold on by the _pelotas_ around here is Shiro—“

 

The yellow paladin snorted, patting Lance’s back hard enough to elicit an _oof_.

 

“Leave the poor guy alone,” he chided playfully. “We can gossip about that later, anyway. What happened after you guys left?”

 

“So nosey…anyway, the ceremony concluded and, just like with Shiro and Allura, we had a bunch of dignitaries come up and congratulate us on our, uh, ‘marriage’ on the way out,” Lance continued, clearing his throat as Hunk snickered. “Keith was a champ, of course, because he has to be so good at _everything_ he does, and I—“

 

He swallowed, biting his lip as Hunk continued to rub his back.

 

“There was this, this _one point_ where this purple and green alien with like four sets of arms came up to us and said that we were a beautiful couple, and oh my _god_ Keith’s face was so cute and pink and his little smile was just so _Keith_ , and the way he _looked_ at me—for, for just a few seconds, I thought—“

 

Lance quivered, letting out a shuddering sigh as he closed his eyes and pulled at the loose fabric of his pants.

 

Ah. So Pidge had been right to think that something was going on between these two.

 

“Never mind,” he muttered, slouching into the mattress and suddenly becoming very interested in his cuticles. His face pulled in pained focus, and Hunk could tell that it was all his friend could do to keep his thoughts from tumbling out of his mouth.

 

Hunk sighed sympathetically as he maneuvered himself to sit next to his friend rather than behind him. He sought Lance’s eyes for a flicker of acknowledgement; to see that he was okay, but the boy had already pulled his legs into his chest and buried his face in his knees.

 

“ _Mierda_ , I’m such an _idiot_ ,” he mumbled, pulling the jacket hood over his head to further muffle his voice. “I should have just listened to my instincts and not let myself get pulled in; I, I shouldn’t have myself think that it could mean something—“

 

Lance sighed wearily, curling further into himself as Hunk wrapped a massive arm around him.

 

“Maybe it still _could_ be something, Lance. You and him, I mean. Keith, well—Keith never told you that he _didn’t_ think of you in that way, did he? I mean, I don’t know if I’m really allowed to be saying this, or if it violates some sort of bro code,”—he chuckles—“but the guy looks at you like—oh, how do I even describe it—like you’re the only person that remembered his birthday? No, scratch that—“

 

“You don’t need to make stuff up to make me feel better, Hunk,” Lance mumbled, his tone bordering on snippy. “I may be stupid, but even I know that he can barely stand me on a good day.”

 

Hunk huffed. “Dude, you’re not stupid, and Keith can stand you just fine. He can stand you _more_ than fine, I reckon, but you’re both far too stubborn and emotionally constipated to realize how much you mean to one another.”

 

“I don’t mean anything to hi—“

 

“Lance, Keith held your hand and looked fondly into your eyes when you told him the two of you make a good team,” Hunk deadpanned, sighing heavily. “Pidge told me, by the way,” he supplied when Lance lifted his head up, the question obvious in his eyes. “And by her accounts it was, and I quote, ‘very, very gay. Like, _hella_ gay.’”

 

“But—“

 

“And that’s not even taking into account that he practically _camped outside out your cryo-pod_ for three day cycles afterwards and got upset when you claimed that you didn’t remember your ‘bonding moment.’”

 

“Keith doesn’t—“

 

“And let’s not forget that time we went to the alternate dimension where the Alteans are evil and Keith _threw his bayard_ into a sentry when it so much as looked at you, leaving himself unarmed to keep you safe.”

 

“He was just—“

 

And then there was that one time the castle’s AI turned on us and he saved you from being thrown out of the airlock, can’t forget that one.”

 

“That wasn’t—“

 

“And _finally_ , agreeing to kissing ‘practice’ after the two of you had apparently already had plenty of practice in a storage closet? I don’t even have to provide any context for that one, dude.”

 

Lance groaned, pulling at his scalp and burying his head into his knees again. “There were perfectly logical, _platonic_ reasons behind all of those things happening! Keith doesn’t like me! He _can’t_ like me!”

 

“And why not?”

 

Lance and Hunk jerked in surprise at the voice, their heads whipping up towards the threshold.

 

“Pidge! How did you—“

 

“Hacked the handprint scanner,” she supplied lazily, plodding over to the bed and setting herself down next to Lance with a plop. She pulled an Altean juice packet out of the front pocket of her hoodie, fumbling with the straw for a moment before she stuck it in the pouch wrong-side-up and took a long sip.

 

“What is this I heard about ‘kissing practice’? That wouldn’t have anything to do with the gross noises I heard through the C.U.B.E when I had you and Keith do the manual install at the gala last night, would it?”

 

Lance balked, choking a little on his own spit.

 

“Actually, never mind, I don’t want to know. As far as Keith liking you, well, there’s no doubt he has the _capacity_ to: the guy’s about as straight as a silly straw.”

 

She continued slurping, pointedly ignoring the fact that Lance’s mouth was hanging open.

 

“And if what I _wish_ I hadn’t heard over the C.U.B.E. was anything to go by it sounded like the both of you were quite enjoying—“

 

“ASKDAFLKJIHSDFG—DID YOU COME HERE FOR SOMETHING?”

 

Pidge blinked. “I did, actually, thanks for asking: Hunk, did you have those plans ready for modifying the C.U.B.E.’s memory capacity and battery life? I want to send out one more probe before we head on out tomorrow.”

 

The yellow paladin rubbed the back of his head. “I, uh, had a look and started mapping out a few things on my tablet. I can meet you in the lab in a minute to go over the schematics with you if you’d like?”

 

“S’okay, I’ll just wait ‘til you two are done,” she replied, swinging her sock-covered feet as she went back to her beverage. Lance glared at Hunk, mouthing _get her out_ and making glaring motions between Pidge and the door.

 

“A-actually, Pidge, we were having a private conversation,” he provided awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’ll only be a few more minutes.”

 

“Well you might want to be a bit more careful about the volume, then,” she supplied neutrally, hopping up from the bed and making her way to the threshold. “I could hear the both of you quite clearly even before I managed to get the door open.”

 

The door, of course, was stuck open long after she’d left.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Really, Hunk? _‘Kissing practice’_?”

 

Pidge clacked away at her keyboard as her friend summoned the schematics on the main screen, her face contorting into a confused (and slightly disgusted) wrinkle. Though she couldn’t see him clearly in her peripheral vision, the green paladin could tell that Hunk was cringing slightly at the grate in her voice. Honestly: did he think he’d be able to sneak in here and go about business as usual after that conversation she’d overheard, did he?

 

“Pidge, I don’t think that you were meant to hear that—“

 

“Yeah, well I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to hear the both of them going at it over the C.U.B.E. either,” she muttered dryly, shuddering at the all too recent memory, “but here I am, in need of something complicated and distracting enough to purge my poor virgin mind from the sounds of Keith and Lance playing Olympic-level tonsil hockey, so I suppose we can’t always get what we want—oh, come _on_!”

 

Pidge swore as her laptop stuttered under the strain of running too many programs at once, slamming the lid down when the internal cooling system started sounding a little too much like the castle’s engines.

 

“Why does it upset you so much?”

 

The question came to her as a surprise—a tentative curiosity rather than an intention to belittle or judge, as Hunk’s questions tended to be—but with an edge of perplexity she’d never detected from him before.

 

She grumbled, scratching at her wrist under her sleeve. This was going to be _really_ embarrassing.

 

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

 

“Why would I laugh?”

 

His face was so concerned, so genuine: a laugh might just make crack him in two. Surely he’d be in pieces by the end of this.

 

“I _hate_ the sound. It’s all smack-ey and wet and fleshy, like someone chewing food with their mouth open. I can’t fucking _stand it_.”

 

Hunk snorted, though it was clear from the way he didn’t attempt to hide it that his amusement wasn’t at her expense.

 

“Don’t mind me,” he chuckled when Pidge sent him a questioning look. “That just wasn’t the answer I was expecting: I suppose that it _does_ sound pretty gross, though.”

 

“What, were you expecting my answer to involve cooties?” she teased, scoffing lightly. “Though when you really think about it, it _is_ pretty unsanitary. Do you know how many different species of bacteria live in the human mouth?”

 

Hunk wriggled his eyebrows in a manner not dissimilar from Lance’s flirtations. “Well I reckon Keith and Lance have similar oral bacteria signatures n— _ow_! Watch it, woman!”

 

“T _rying. To. Forget!”_ Pidge snipped, reaching threateningly for her other green lion slipper as Hunk rubbed the side of his head. She flipped her laptop open again, groaning when she saw that the screen had accumulated several magenta lines. It flickered white momentarily before shutting down.

 

“FUCKING _QUIZNAK_!”

 

“Dude, one of your RAM chips is probably just loose,” Hunk said calmly, tossing the slipper back over to her grumbling form. “You keep tossing that thing around like it’s got a 10 on the Mohs scale. Give it here.”

 

He pulled out a Philips head from one of the drawers, making quick work of the screws on the back of the laptop’s core processor.

 

“Don’t go rooting around too much in there, Genius Bar,” Pidge mumbled, crossing her arms as he lifted the plate off.

 

“Uuuuh.”

 

“What?”

 

It was a _mess_ : bits of solder had dripped everywhere, and many wires looked to be held together with Dollar Store electric tape. There were parts to about five different computers shoved in there (Pidge, of course, had scribbled out all of the Apple symbols and written ‘FUCK YOU’ in silver Sharpie if space permitted—she’d modified those, for sure) and there was evidence that she’d made at least one repair to the cooling system using Olkari tech.

 

“Pidge, your laptop is a 21st century Frankenstein’s monster,” he deadpanned, wincing as he poked around some wires to get to the loose RAM chip (he’d been right, after all).

 

“Says the hardware guy to the software person,” she mumbled, glancing at the device somewhat guiltily. “So are you gonna fix it or not?”

 

“Depends on your definition of fix… _there_ ,” he said, nodding as the RAM clicked into place. “Short-term problem resolved.”

 

“Petty.”

 

“You’re welcome.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

It had taken them both a little bit of time to set up the hardware update for the C.U.B.E., but now that they’d programmed their improvised Balmera crystal laser to cut out the pieces and were waiting for them to ‘print,’ Hunk and Pidge were beginning to rifle through some of the files they’d managed to extract from the processor in the Qijitii storage room.

 

Only: well, it was just the alien equivalent of emails.

 

Lots and lots of emails.

 

“I think this is the most boring thing I’ve ever found in a hack,” Pidge grumbled, scrolling through a long-winded exchange between a Qijitii intermediate and some merchant in the Pollux star system. She’d searched keywords for anything and everything that might have raised suspicion—Galra, quintessence, arena, Harpeyii, Voltron—but nothing of note had emerged. “Who knew that the Qijitii were so into their alien spices? You wouldn’t be able to tell based on how bland their food is. Four GAC per _folli_ of bittulien leaf, six hundred GAC per _meul_ of capalleria pollen—“

 

“ _Six hundred GAC_ per _meul_?” exclaimed Hunk, peering over Pidge’s shoulder to squint at the screen. “That can’t be right.”

 

“Says it right here,” Pidge said pointedly, raising an eyebrow as she highlighted the area on the screen. “What, does that mean something to you?”

 

“The worst rate I’ve ever been able to get from an Unilu for capalleria pollen is fourteen GAC per _meul_ ,” he muttered, scratching his head. “There’s no way it could have been marked up that much, especially in bulk. Besides, I’m pretty sure nothing at the ball even had capalleria pollen in it.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“I’m allergic to the spores.”

 

Pidge furrowed her brow. “Then why do you cook with it?”

 

“Because it mimics the flavor of cilantro once it’s been diluted in water,” he supplied simply. “I always get a weird look when I ask for it suspended in an aqueous solution, but the stuff gets _everywhere_ otherwise. If anyone in that ballroom had anything with capalleria pollen on it in the last decapheeb I would have needed an inhaler.”

 

“It said that the transaction was completed, though, right here: less than a month ago.”

 

“What system did you say it came from?”

 

“Pollux. Planet, uh, I think it’s pronounced Yeelgathri?”

 

Hunk scrunched his nose, huffing under his breath as he whipped out his tablet and pulled up his growing alien spice info spreadsheet, swiping it over to the main screen so that Pidge wouldn’t have to strain her neck to see it.

 

“Capalleria pollen requires solar radiation from a blue sun to germinate,” he muttered, tapping the information he’d scrawled into the box, “but if I recall correctly the Pollux system revolves around a yellow sun. The nearest blue sun from there is more than a light-year away.”

 

They looked at one another, eyes bright with revelation.

 

“Illuminati confirmed?”

 

“Hell yeah.”

 

\- - - - - - -


	19. Year 2 (part 15)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Triggers [[[in brackets below]]] involve spoilers.
> 
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> [[[I’m afraid it’s 0 to 100 real quick here, folks: we’ve got some warnings for human trafficking and slavery, plus some body horror. On the lighter side, we also have an awkward boner or two. Just because.]]]

**Year II (Part 15)**

 

The rest had all seemed to fall into place after that.

 

Hunk and Pidge cross-referenced every ‘email’ and found several more anomalies over the course of the hour. Pidge had started a digital pin board for anything that looked fishy, and had initiated a program to search for patterns in the discovered errors.

 

It didn’t take long to get results.

 

“’I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence’,” Pidge quoted in a low voice, rubbing her hands together as the program yielded some promising looking data. Hunk’s bark of laughter informed her that he’d understood the reference.

 

“What massive conspiracy have you unearthed this time, Pidgeon? Did the Qijitii hide a treasure map in their encryption as well, then?”

 

“Yes, and it requires that blue sun of yours to see the invisible ink,” she said, circling three key areas on the digital board. “Based off of the information you gave me on the last five decapheebs, these transactions were the most suspicious given the context: both the shipment’s price and place of origin were anomalous, with significant GAC funds being funneled out of the Qijitii reserves to two or more third parties per transaction.”

 

Hunk squinted, eyes flitting through the data. “Can you make any correlations between events hosted by the Qijitii and the dates the transactions were made?”

 

“I was thinking the same thing, but I didn’t find anything conclusive: in the same time frame, however, the number of Qijitii mate selection ceremonies and the number of suspicious transactions were the same, and the transactions always occurred within two months of a ceremony, either before or after.”

 

“It’s still a large window, though,” Hunk muttered. “Unless…”

 

His eyes widened.

 

“Pidge, did the Qijitii document the race and/or species of the mates they selected in the last three ceremonies?”

 

“One Lepetotan, a Khlmer-meri, and a Pougethean,” she read, glancing up. “Wait, if you and I are on the same page…then the spices in each of the suspicious transactions…oh my god.”

 

Pidge stopped typing, drawing a shuddering breath as she buried her head in her palms. Hunk nodded solemnly, shuffling over to rest a comforting hand on her shoulder as she let loose a string of Yiddish curses.

 

“I’ll inform Allura and Coran that we have a possible trafficking situation on our hands.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

They mobilized the next day.

 

Accompanied by Kolivan and several of his Marmora operatives, the paladins set forth to breach the Qijitii harems to test Hunk and Pidge’s theory. It hadn’t been difficult to find: almost half of the palatial complex was devoted to the spouses’ living and sleeping quarters, and the area was deeply nestled within a surveillance perimeter with regrettably few openings.

 

Getting in without being detected proved to be more of a challenge, but Shiro’s experience with tracking and memorizing surveillance patterns had ultimately served them well, and within half a varga both Lance and Allura had managed to breach what they believed would be the residence area.

 

What they saw, however, was far from habitable.

 

At some point in time the place may have passed for livable quarters: intricately carved and painted columns lined the stairways, and a carpet that might have once been soft underfoot followed the soft contours of the seating area’s inner walls. A heap of massive, beanbag-like pillows had been shoved into a corner, the intricate patterns on the fabric obscured by a smattering of stains so foul-smelling that the air filtration systems in the blue and red paladins’ helmets whirred and strained from overuse.

 

“What happened here?” Lance whispered, his gloved fingers tracing the shape of a relief on one of the columns, grimacing when it came back dusty and somewhat grimy. “This place might have been sweet digs once, but it’s worse than a public beach bathroom now.”

 

“It does appear that this area has not been tended to in quite some time,” Allura added, obviously concerned. “Surely the considerable wealth and pride of the Qijitii court dictates that they would house their spouses in conditions better than these.”

 

“Well they must, because no one is here: if the Alphe, Bete, and Geme have about fifty spouses each, then there should be at least a hundred and fifty people here, and that’s not even including the children.”

 

Allura nodded in assent, patching in her comm to Pidge.

 

“No one is in the residence hall: are there any other chambers that would be large enough to house the spouses?” she asked.

 

“If you go maybe fifty paces ahead and take a left down the corridor there is another large space,” said Pidge. “I’ve still got the surveillance on a loop, and the Marmorites just delivered an all-clear about thirty ticks ago.”

 

“Thank you, Pidge. Lance, lead the way.”

 

The red paladin activated his bayard, creeping around the corner with the pistol raised as Allura followed not far behind.

 

Before long they had come upon a massive metal door, its solid façade towering imposingly several feet over their heads. Judging by how out of place the large, industrial object felt in a room with murals painted on the walls (Lance assumed that the fat, cherubic humanoids that dotted the wall were Qijitii children), it had been installed long after the room had been initially built and furnished.

 

Pidge guided them both through overriding the electrical lock, standing by on-screen as Allura used her strength to haul the door open just enough so that Lance could comfortably stick the nose of his blaster into the opening to sweep. A cool lime-green light bathed the surface of the weapon, but all appeared well.

 

“Clear…but there’s something glowy in here,” Lance mentioned curiously, trying to pry open the door just a little more to increase his range of vision. “It’s a bunch of…columns?”

 

Allura followed him inside, her bayard whip poised and at the ready as she scanned the area for movement.

 

The green light skirted each surface, plucking at contours and edges of the furnishings in the otherwise pitch-darkness. The bright blue glows of their bayards and suits did little to aid their vision even as they approached a small cluster of the lights’ apparent sources, scattered like spider webs across the surface of several pillars.

 

Up close it became evident that the lights were pulsing in intervals, each column proceeding at its own pace. Lance furrowed his brow, rubbing the area of his helmet that covered his chin as he singled one out.

 

“Strange,” he muttered, reaching out to run his fingers along the cracks. “It’s almost as if it’s alive.“

 

“Lance, don’t touch anything—!”

 

But her warning had come too late: the moment his glove skimmed the surface the cracks expanded, bathing the corner in blinding light. Lance blinked as his eyes adjusted, groaning slightly as the flash popped beneath his eyelids.

 

“What the quizn—m-muh— _madre dios._ ”

 

Was that—was that a _fetus_?

 

Whatever it was, it was grey, wrinkly, and semi-translucent under the harsh light, the synchronous beating of its three heart-like organs clearly visible as the creature floated idly in a bubbling, bright green liquid. An umbilical cord (or some alien equivalent) and yolk sac anchored the creature at the top of the column, and Lance hated that it reminded of the unborn shark pups he’d seen wriggling inside of their egg cases during his school trip to the aquarium in the fourth grade.

 

He subconsciously made the sign of the cross over his chest as his stomach roiled with nausea, and for a moment Lance thought he was going to be sick inside of his helmet.

 

“A-Allura—“

 

Pidge’s voice crackled over the comms. “Lance, come in. What’s wrong?”

 

He could vaguely make out Allura attempting to explain the inexplicable sight before them as his head swam with nausea, unable to tear his eyes away from the floating, _fútbol_ -sized horror floating in what he now realized was an artificial womb. And of course, the fact that this was one of only several dozen in this room alone, and that the asynchronous pulsing of light wasn’t mechanical, but—

 

Its eyes opened, and Lance screamed.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Three hundred and twenty-six.

 

There had been three hundred and twenty-six of those—of those _things_ in all, each at a varying stage of its horrific and unnatural development. Some had had extra limbs, torsos, eyes, _heads_ (and some lacked them altogether); others had the beginnings of claws and talons emerging from their extremities, others—others appeared to have developed from the inside out in places, their spines convoluting in ways that weren’t natural in any known corner of the universe.

 

The cache of gamete samples and mutagenic agents they’d discovered locked away deep inside of a cryogenic unit had left no doubt with regard to the _how_ , but even as members of the Voltron Alliance had flanked to their aid and assisted them in subduing the perpetrators of these unspeakable deeds, no one could even begin to piece together the _why_.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Lance didn’t remember much about what had transpired in the day to follow: he’d felt numb and empty, floating in and out of lucidity as he’d stared out into space from his bed in the sick bay, the steady _dripdripdrip_ of the IV delivering alien Xanax into his bloodstream. Hunk and Pidge might have been there at some point, one rubbing his back while the other clacked away on a keyboard, and Allura’s starlight-silver hair might have shimmered under the pale blue lights. He wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t sure whether he cared if he was sure.

 

Things began to come back in to sharper focus when someone (Shiro? Hunk?) mentioned offhand that the Blade had managed to detain Rorix.

 

He hadn’t felt a thing when he’d ripped the IV out; didn’t hear the protests as Shiro or Hunk or whoever the hell it was had flitted about and encouraged him to rest; hadn’t thought twice about pulling on his armor and getting Red to literally deliver him to his destination.

 

The Marmorites guarding the door had hardly given him a second glance when he’d requested entrance, but when the muffled sounds of the Qijitii’s pained grunts and groans echoed off the walls they’d stormed in to see the red paladin standing over them, knuckles split and bloody even through his gloves.

 

As Kolivan finally managed to haul him out, Lance realized that his throat burned with strain and effort; that his tongue had cracked like a whip into the silence. An unspeakable fury had bubbled in his bones at the inhumanity; the idea; the _gall_ that Rorix had had to even _contemplate_ taking Shiro away; taking _Keith_ away—they had _no right_ —

 

In the end, when the Blade had managed to locate Rorix’s head spouse (who by all accounts appeared healthy and well cared for), Lance discovered that they’d had neither right nor choice.

 

It turns out that the Galra had been capitalizing on the Qijitii’s influence for centuries, conducting a sting operation to strategically lure members of prominent royal lineages out of hiding when they flocked to the mate selection ceremonies. Things only became worse when the Druids had begun to fixate on filling the Galra gladiator arenas with increasingly grotesque and unnatural creatures to execute prisoners and entertain the masses, and the near universally compatible qualities of Qijitii sex cells had revolutionized their ability to create things that even nature had thought ill of conceiving.

 

In return for their compliance and silence, the Qijitii court members and their families had been allowed to live, and they were allowed to live much as they had before: hosting mate selection events, siring offspring, and managing the planet’s commerce, so long as they remained silent. It turns out that they’d tried asking for help in more nuanced ways, doing what they could to slip under the radar and communicate to someone, _anyone_ that could help: it turns out that the emails that Pidge and Hunk had intercepted had reflected actual transactions for spices, and that the fact that they were willing to pay so much more for certain items would raise flags and alert someone of their situation.

 

It’s why the Qijitii had practically baited them into coming, and why Rorix had been bold enough to request Shiro and Keith as their spouses. It’s how the Qijitii had known about the Harpeyii, and why the Harpeyii—who, according to Shiro’s memory, were created by the Druids and oversaw prisoners—had been there in the first place.

 

It all made sense now.

 

Despite the risks to themselves, the Qijitii had been asking for help, and Lance had gone ahead and beaten up their Geme.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Keith found him on the training deck.

 

He’d torn off his armor and wrapped the sleeves of the flight suit around his waist, donning a sleeveless white shirt whose permanent pit stains betrayed that it had seen far better days, and been shooting at training bots with his bayard for the past half hour. The retaliation settings he’d selected for the exercise—softer bullets that would sting rather than cause severe damage—had resulted in a smattering of smarting bruises and welts along his forearms, their constant throbbing reminding Lance of just how poorly he was doing in the simulation. He winced as another landed right on top of an existing mark and sent a shooting pain down his elbow, but grit his teeth and clenched the firearm even tighter in his fist.

 

Something shifted behind him, and before he knew it one of the training bots had seized him about the waist while another attempted to remove his bayard. He yelled out in frustration, snarling as he struggled to break free, because he was _so fucking sick of_ being bested; of being the leftover paladin that didn’t have a thing; _couldn’t_ have a thing—

 

He felt the red lion nudging him from the back of his mind, growling over the blood pounding in his ears: at any other point in time it might have been a reassurance; might have been a comfort and gesture of solidarity, but at this point it only served to remind him of the hole that had been left in his heart when Blue had abandoned him for Allura, making it perfectly clear that he didn’t deserve her; didn’t deserve _this_ —

 

Lance roared as he broke free, snarling as clamped his hand around the bot’s neck and shoved the barrel of is gun into its forehead, his arms barely shaking at the recoil when discharged the weapon. He swiftly ducked under a roundhouse kick from the remaining droid, using the dispatched bot’s metal torso to block an incoming barrage of punches. Throwing it aside, Lance took careful aim and landed three shots square in the gladiator’s chest, screaming as he emptied the rest of the magazine into its head and stomach as it collapsed onto the training deck floor.

 

He threw the bayard against the wall when it failed to yield more rounds, barely flinching as it returned to its original form in a flash of light, and it was red, so _red_ and _wrong_ and not blue; not _his_ Blue—

 

“Lance?”

 

His eyes had already begun to well with tears, but Keith’s voice—cracking and unsure and laden with a concern he wasn’t sure he deserved—brought the final wall down.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Keith held him through his cry, cradling Lance in his lap on the floor of the training deck as his body shook with sobs. He’d tried talking; tried explaining the roots of his woes, but there had been so much built up over so long that it had all just erupted in a tangle of Spanglish and incoherent mumbling, and even though Keith couldn’t understand the majority of the things falling from his lips he nodded and hummed, stroking Lance’s hair and back until the tears fell no more.

 

He carded his fingers through the hair at the base of Lance’s neck, rolling some of the silky strands between his fingers as the boy’s breathing slowly returned to normal. The tear stains on the front of his shirt were still damp and clung to his skin, but only on account of the fact that Lance’s cheek had seldom left the crook of his neck even since he’d calmed down.

 

Keith hardly thought that this was the time for his own internal turmoil to conflict with his concern for and attempts to console his teammate, but it was becoming less and less plausible for his heart to be beating this fast while sedentary and Lance didn’t seem to be wanting to separate himself from Keith’s chest anytime soon.

 

A part of him he’d buried deep wanted to enjoy their closeness: he wanted to delude himself into thinking that the pleasant feeling thrumming in his chest when Lance nestled into his side was a purely biological reaction; his body’s chemical reward for helping to protect another member of the species (or, at least, the human half of his species). Heck: for all he knew it could have been his Galra genes bubbling to the surface, but something told him that an awkward and utterly embarrassing conversation with Kolivan wouldn’t answer any of his questions, either.

 

And then there was, uh, the whole pretending to be husbands thing, not to mention kissing Lance.

 

_Kissing Lance_.

 

Wow.

 

Um, yeah. That had happened.

 

More than once.

 

Okay, a _lot_ more than once.

 

Keith inhaled deeply, ruffling Lance’s hair ever so slightly as he let the breath leave his lips. He’d run his fingers through that hair; clawed his nails into that scalp barely a day ago, pulling Lance’s stupidly attractive face into his own as they’d played out their ruse in front of no fewer than five hundred aliens, sampling each other’s lips with soft hums and playful chuckles as Rorix had none too subtly glared at them from their place at the Court table.

 

And the night before— _the night before_ —

 

After the fourth or fifth kiss they’d gone _far_ beyond ‘practicing:’ Lance’s suggestions had become murmured afterthoughts, disappearing in his throat as he’d claimed Keith’s mouth and held their bodies close, his dexterous hands tracing along the lines of his waist and hipbones, thumbs digging in tantalizingly close to the ‘V’ of his groin.

 

Keith was about point twelve seconds away from shucking off his armor and letting Lance take him right there when Allura’s footsteps had echoed down the hallway and forced them to part ways for the evening, naught but a hastily muttered “goodnight” between them as they’d practically jogged to their rooms.

 

Keith had taken a _very_ cold shower that night, and was desperately searching for a way he could get some relief to the same effect as his face flared red at the memory, the beginnings of profound arousal stirring just behind his navel.

 

Perfect. Absolutely fucking _perfect_. He was getting a boner while Lance was _crying in his lap_.

 

And then—fucking _hell_ —was that Shiro walking down the hallway to the training deck?

 

Keith groaned as the door hissed open, putting his finger to his lips and then pointing at Lance’s body before Shiro could greet him too loudly. Realization dawned on his face (in addition to something that seemed suspiciously akin to smugness—Keith would wipe the training deck floor with that bullshit when he got the chance), and he managed to pad on over without making too much noise.

 

“Hunk and Pidge sent me in to check on him,” Shiro whispered, nodding at Lance’s sleeping form. “They said he was pretty upset after the Marmorites threw him out of the interrogation room.”

 

Keith nodded. “He’s got a lot on his mind right now. Came in here to blow off steam, turned into a tantrum…you know the drill. He’s cooling off now, though: I think he just needed to vent and to sleep.”

 

“Don’t we all,” Shiro affirmed, brushing his bangs away from his eyes with a weary sigh. “So do you need help getting him to his room, or can you handle Lance on your own?”

 

“I’ll manage, but thanks,” Keith affirmed. “And go to bed, dude: I’m getting tired just looking at you.”

 

Shiro chuckled. “Fine, but don’t stay up too much later: the castle’s lights will be dimming for the night cycle soon, and we have some loose ends to tie up with the Qijitii before we call the rest of the Voltron Alliance here to address the current situation as we start our next mission.”

 

Keith frowned, making a face. “Already?”

 

“Afraid so.”

 

He sighed, eyes flicking towards Lance’s placid visage as he bit his lip.

 

“We’ll make sure that Lance is ready to get back into action before we send him out,” Shiro reassured, smirking at Keith knowingly as he scoffed in embarrassment, muttering something about a ‘bonding moment’ under his breath.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“All right, Kolivan. Thank you for keeping us informed.”

 

The Galra on the screen nodded before the holo-screen faded out of existence, shrouding the lab in silence.

 

Hunk sank down heavily in his rolly chair, running a hand through his bangs as he let out a weary exhale.

 

“The Blade just received the remainder of the files containing our findings,” he murmured, glancing over at Pidge. She’d been rooted to the spot on the couch for the past three hours creating a new algorithm to encrypt the data they’d deciphered so that only the Blade could access it, but even as Hunk’s words should have signaled completion the green paladin continued staring at the screen, eyes unfocused and unblinking.

 

“Uh, Pidge?”

 

“Yeah, sorry,” she replied hastily, shaking her head to and fro several times until her wits seemed to return to her. “You said that the Blade received the data?”

 

A nod. “You okay over there?”

 

Pidge sighed, removing her glasses so that she could scratch at her scalp and drag her fingers down her face, the bags beneath her eyes only becoming larger as she pulled her cheeks taut. She closed her laptop with a sense of finality, shoving it over to the coffee table before she allowed her bum to be partially swallowed by the overly soft cushions.

 

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

 

Hunk chuckled despite himself, plodding over to settle into the couch beside her. It dipped under his added weight, and Pidge felt her body succumb to gravity and lean into the yellow paladin’s side, her cheek pressed against the upper part of his arm.

 

“You’re warm,” she commented, the rest of her body molding into his side as she practically slumped into his lap, wrapping her hands around his forearm to keep herself from face-planting into Hunk’s stomach. “Like my computer before I installed the cooling system.”

 

The young man chuckled, mocking the sound of a computer fan followed by something that could have been meant to replicate a rocket launch. Pidge snorted, squeezing Hunk’s arm in mock reprimand. “No, dude, it was more like…whrrrrrrrrrrRRrRRRRrRRNNNNGHHNGHHHH…”

 

“No, _that’s_ the sound the castle’s laser cannon makes when it’s charging. Which, now that I think about it, given how much of a cobbled together mess your computer is I’m sure the force if its explosion would equal that of the castle—“

 

“Quit poking fun at my computer,” she teased, nudging Hunk again. “She’s sensitive.”

 

He snorted, letting the room fall silent for a moment as the two nestled into the couch. With any luck Allura would be letting them take it pretty easy for the next few days until they were ready for their next mission, so there was no need to rush directly to the next thing as they usually did.

 

“What’re you thinking about?”

 

Hunk hummed, biting his lip. “It’s a tie between how much I miss the taco truck that visited the Garrison on Thursdays and how I could possibly replicate a peanut flavor using gnellei extract and essence of tíwil,” he lied, shoving down the more foreboding thoughts that had been vying for his attention for the past few hours.

 

For a combination of reasons Pidge didn’t catch the fib, but she perked up whenever Hunk mentioned his progress on fulfilling Pidge’s request for peanut butter billions of miles away from Earth.

 

“Dude, I’m pretty sure that managing to make some passable peanut butter cookies up here would be such a prolific feat that the war would end instantly,” she declared, though much like her friend, Pidge was fixated on far graver matters, and Hunk caught on immediately.

 

“Is that all?”

 

Pidge bit her lip. Curse Hunk and his superhuman perception.

 

“I, uh… I actually wanted to ask you a few questions about the Harpeyii attack. I noticed a few things when I was…affected, and wanted to see if you experienced them, too.”

 

She swallowed, awaiting Hunk’s answer diligently as he turned the question around in his head. He knew already that, for the sake of minimizing his bias, she wouldn’t tell him her own side effects until he had divulged his.

 

Hunk’s soft smile had descended at the corners into a contemplative frown, his brow furrowing in concentration as he tried to remember the recent events. “I’ll do what I can to help, but I’m afraid I don’t remember that much,” he admitted, staring into his lap.

 

“Then consider yourself lucky,” Pidge muttered, reaching for her laptop to open up a document containing Coran’s findings on Hunk’s injuries. “But do the best you can, starting from the beginning when the disturbance started.”

 

The yellow paladin’s account was identical to hers: it turns out that Hunk had a near photographic memory, and was able to remember each space that they’d occupied before and during the attack. Pidge nodded along, not noting anything unusual, until—

 

“Well, you know what happened after the Harpeyii came after you: I stepped in front of you, telling it— _trying_ to tell it to stop, but then it said something about suffering being imminent? It kind of starts to get blurry there, because it looked at me and then all of the sudden this— _indescribable pain_ started right here”—he placed a hand between his chest and his armpit—“and then I remember not being able to breathe: I felt like Yellow was sitting on my chest. After that, nothing. Well, nothing until I almost fell flat on my face tumbling out of the cryopod, but, heh, that part I think we both remember pretty well—“

 

“Wait,” Pidge interrupted, halting her typing and squinting at the screen.

 

Hunk tilted his head. “Did I say something wrong?”

 

“No, not wrong. Peculiar.”

 

She looked through the records Coran had left her, frowning when the composite scan of Hunk’s body during the healing process showed that there had been no acute damage to the area he’d described: the only areas the pod had altered were the fractured vertebrae he’d sustained after being thrown into the wall.

 

When she told him as much, his eyes widened. “Nothing? Like, not even an injection site or a bruise?”

 

Pidge shook her head solemnly, not quite meeting his gaze. Now that her doubled sample size had confirmed her initial finding, the gears were grinding at a brutal pace, going faster and faster and faster until the calm concern of Hunk’s smooth baritone brought her back to the present.

 

“Pidge, what’s wrong?”

 

She bit her lip, pulling for the string around her neck until the fidget was pinched comfortingly between her fingers.

 

“When Coran gave me a once-over, he determined that there was no damage to any part of my body,” she murmured, pulling up the appropriate information that she’d translated from the Altean script in Coran’s report. “I didn’t even have elevated serotonin levels that one would expect after experiencing such a degree of pain: the only thing that wasn’t normal was the fact that I had a marked stress response. Until I saw your results, I was half convinced that everything that had happened was all in my head.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Pidge ducked her head, clutching her stomach as she curled into herself further.

 

“I was never put in a healing pod because there wasn’t anything wrong with me after the Harpeyii attack,” she half-whispered, speaking more to her knees than to her friend. “For a bit I thought I’d imagined the whole thing.”

 

Letting out a shaky breath, she reached for the crook of Hunk’s arm again, squeezing tightly when he obliged. Hunk tentatively placed his free hand on her back and began to rub circles into the knotted surface, still at a loss for words. None of this made any sense: she’d clearly been in pain, and he himself had felt as if he’d been shot point-blank in the chest. How could there have been no marks or signs of damage?

 

“I think that there’s still a lot we don’t know about the Harpeyii and their abilities,” he stated carefully, resting his chin lightly on top of Pidge’s unruly mop of hair (she’d told him not too long ago that the weight was comforting to her). “We’ll have to consult our intel team from the Voltron Alliance to see if they know anything. For now, though, you’re— _we’re_ safe, and I made sure that Allura and Shiro know that we’re both going to take it easy until we’re ready for action again, battle wounds or not.”

 

Pidge nodded, her hair scratching his chin and tickling his nose. “Thanks, Hunk,” she murmured, eyes fluttering shut as the exhaustion of the past few days caught up to her. “You’re the best.”

 

Within moments her breathing had slowed down to a deep, steady pace, the sound of her soft snores confirming that she’d finally succumbed to sleep.

 

Hunk sighed tiredly, feeling a rush of affection for his friend as her form slumped completely into his side, crumpling like a ragdoll into the soft recesses of his bulk as the tension left her body. He shifted to adjust their positions so that his arm wouldn’t fall asleep in her grip, and as she settled back into his body her cheek pressed against the broad expanse of his chest, her ear pressed directly on top of his heart.

 

Something unfamiliar hummed in his chest when he reached up to brush the bangs from her eyes, just as the pad of his thumb ghosted along her pale, freckled cheek. The feeling bubbled up in his throat and escaped as a soft gasp, taking him completely off-guard.

 

What the quiznak?

 

But as soon as it had come over him, the confusion seemed to have scared it away. On any other day Hunk wouldn’t have let it go—heck, he probably would have brooded on it for days until something more pressing came up, but he was too close to sleep to bring himself to care.

 

Hunk followed Pidge into dreamless sleep, holding her close as his breath fell into sync with her own.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

_END YEAR II_

 

\- - - - - - -


	20. Year 3 (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BEACH EPISODE!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _All right, for the sake of clarity and to keep things on track we’re going to assume that Seasons 3 and 4 have happened before Year 3 of this fic. I’m SUPER stoked that Pidge found her brother, and feel like Matt will make a wonderful addition to this story in terms of Hunk and Pidge’s friendship and camaraderie (also, he’s a total fucking nerd and gives off all of the Proud Older Sibling vibes and fell in love with Allura at first sight so he’s basically me), and will also help Pidge find a sense of stability and belonging while she’s still in space trying to figure a zillion things out._
> 
> _In any case, thank you so much for your comments and kudos so far! And thanks especially to my homebodies in Hidgecord for screaming about Hidge with me and making me fic fanart!!! I’m so honored!_
> 
> WARNINGS: some T-rated/bordering on M-rated crude humor.

**YEAR III**

 

The undercut itched.

 

Hunk ran a hand through the coarse stubble in the back of his neck, his fingers travelling up to the crown of his head until the familiar length registered. It was his usual habit to shower immediately after a haircut, but given how packed their schedule was today he’d decided to hold off until later. Besides, there was one more thing he wanted to test out before he decided to join the rest of the crew for brunch.

 

He made a few more adjustments on the tablet with his stylus, saving and exporting the file once he’d determined it to be adequate. It still wasn’t quite to where he wanted it yet, but he figured he wouldn’t get the opportunity to go through with actually applying the design for quite some time.

 

Activating the projector, Hunk searched for the camera app on his communication device as the bulb in the projector warmed up and clicked quietly as it processed the file.

 

Hunk smiled as the _tatau_ design faded into view on his left shoulder and bicep, the crisp black lines and shapes still standing out against the warm brown of his skin, the forms molded perfectly to the contours of his arm. He turned this way and that, admiring the way the design seemed to ripple as he flexed the muscle beneath it.

 

He’d made some modifications to his family’s _tatau_ , incorporating aspects of the borders and edges that he’d recalled from his _tutu_ ’s shoulder and back. He’d always loved the triangular motif ( _Tutu_ had told him that it was shark’s teeth), but he still wasn’t sure about the thick, wave-like shapes in the middle. They’d reminded him of the countless galaxies they’d seen peppering the vast black blanket of space, and their ambiguity left him with the sense that they might yet come to mean something some time in his future.

 

Well, whatever they meant, it wouldn’t really count until he could go home and actually have them inked into his skin.

 

Hunk sighed, snapping a quick picture before turning off the projector and somewhat dejectedly watching as the designs disappeared from his skin. A year ago today, had they still been on Earth, he would have been granted leave from the Garrison to go to Samoa and have his coming-of-age celebration. _Tutu_ had been telling him about her own since Hunk was about five: how her parents had had her name down with a fourteenth-generation _tatau tufuga_ since the day she was born; how she’d made the final modifications to her designs on the flight to Samoa from Honolulu; how her sisters had held her hands and wiped her forehead when the pain had been at its worst.

 

A cracking noise over the castle’s comm system jolted Hunk out of his reverie, and by the time Allura’s face faded into view over the projector he was standing at attention again, ready for the princess’s orders.

 

“Good morning, Hunk,” she greeted, sending the yellow paladin a warm smile. “and Happy Birthday.”

 

He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, surmising that Lance had probably talked of nothing else since waking up. He’d always put forth great effort into making sure that everyone remembered birthdays, and making sure that each occasion was marked by a special activity.

 

“Thanks, ‘Lura,” he replied. “Apologies that I’m running a little late this morning. Can you tell the others that I’ll be up in a dobosh or two?”

 

“Certainly. We’re all in the dining room when you’re ready!”

 

She signed off, leaving Hunk to finish putting away his things before he left he and Pidge’s shared lab, walking the familiar route to the mess hall through the ship’s galley.

 

He’d half expected the greeting when the electronic doors slid open, but the warm reception brought a warm smile to his face nonetheless.

 

“Happy Birthday, Hunk!” they called in unison, applauding and cheering as the yellow paladin entered the dining hall. Lance had brought his _kol_ horn (a particularly annoying, vuvuzela-like souvenir he’d picked up a few months ago during their mission to Kylix) and was attempting to play out the ‘Happy Birthday’ song on it, despite the fact that there was no physically feasible way for a human to change the notes on the strange instrument. About halfway through Keith got fed up and yanked it out of his mouth, whacking Lance lightly in the side with it as he protested loudly, and Matt couldn’t conceal his snigger behind his hands.

 

“Aww, you _guys_ ,” Hunk gushed, wrapping Allura and Coran (who had been the first to approach him) into a crushing hug. “Thanks so much!”

 

“Don’t thank us yet!” called Lance, grinning widely from ear to ear as he pulled a covered floating cart from one of the corners of the room. He lifted the cover, beaming brightly as he revealed a massive, three-tiered food goo cake underneath.

 

Hunk laughed, clasping his hands together as he admired the pastry’s craftsmanship. At first glance it looked like a refined version of what they had for dinner virtually every night in the castle: in fact it had become somewhat of a joke to present a food goo cake to each of the paladins on their birthdays, regardless of whether they managed to scrounge together something appetizing to go with the virtually tasteless green food or not.

 

But as he got closer, Hunk picked up something familiar.

 

Was that…?

 

No. It _couldn’t_ be.

 

As he got closer he could make out the faint scent of imitation coconut and lilikoi, and he nearly began to cry as the familiarity of it all flooded his senses.

 

“You—how—where did you get the ingredients for this?” he said, voice cracking with emotion as Lance and Matt stepped forward, giving Hunk another warm hug.

 

“We called in a few favors with the martian dude at the Earth Store,” explained Lance, waving his hand as if it were nothing. “Pidge and Matt are currently sifting through the samples and creating a database for the chemical makeup of all of the flavors so that you can experiment with them.”

 

Hunk’s mouth dropped open. “ _All_ of the flavors?”

 

Pidge pulled out her tablet, adjusting her glasses as she scrolled down a page. “The martian dude’s sources also tracked down imitation peppermint, chocolate, pineapple, banana, vanilla, passion fruit, and coffee,” she listed, chuckling under her breath. “I think he must’ve raided a shipment of flavor syrups or something. We know it’s not quite the real thing, but Coran and I have been working on isolating the components of each flavor and replicating them in the lab so that we can have our own supply here in the cas—whoa!”

 

The yellow paladin had glommed onto her, swinging the both of them from side to side as he held her tight, her toes dragging on the floor as he practically sobbed his thanks. He’d been trying for _months_ to replicate some of the flavors of Earth foods, but without samples or access to knowledge about the chemical make-ups of certain foods and flavors (except for the small blessing of Kaltenecker’s milk), he’d mostly been left to taste-testing and guesswork. Coconut in particular had been particularly elusive, and now that he had this—

 

“Hunk,” Pidge squeaked, wriggling in his hold until he realized how tightly he’d been holding the poor girl, and released her with a sheepish apology.

 

“Sorry, Pidge, I’m just—oh my gosh, I can’t believe this! I’m going to make lava cake, and coconut macaroons, and sorbet—“

 

“And perhaps some coffee and tea, too?” offered Shiro shyly, smiling as he waved his metal arm, clutching a paper bag in the other. He handed it to Hunk gingerly, as if its contents were precious.

 

Hunk peered inside, and just about started bawling when he pulled out several specimen jars full of seeds.

 

“We’re hoping to manage a garden in the palace greenhouse as a team, but we wanted to let you know before we started that you’ll be able to grow some different things and maybe plan how much of each we should plant,” Shiro explained, glancing around to the rest of the team. “With any luck, in a few weeks you’ll have some familiar ingredients to work with.”

 

Coran offered Hunk a handkerchief as he blubbered in thanks, sinking into the nearby sofa to collect himself. Within seconds Lance was massaging his shoulders, his pointy chin nestled into the crown of the yellow paladin’s head for a moment before he swept in and pecked Hunk on the cheek, cackling when Pidge made a disgusted noise in her throat at hearing the characteristic smack of his lips. Hunk chuckled good-naturedly, pawing at Lance to lay off and stop clinging to his neck as he wiped the remaining tears from his eyes.

 

“You guys are amazing,” he hiccupped, blowing his nose something fierce into the hankee, sending Coran an apologetic look as the Altean man winced at the mess. “I can’t thank you enough for all that you did. This is—this is really special.”

 

“Count on Lance to think of a mutually beneficial birthday gift,” snarked Pidge, elbowing the boy in the side. “By his reckoning we’ll have a good enough harvest of cucumbers to spare some for his beauty routines.”

 

Lance feigned offense, but gave Hunk a sheepish grin. “Hunk. Hunkarino. My Hunka Burnin’ Love. My dude.”

 

Hunk rolled his eyes: of course he’d be more than happy to attempt recreating his friends’ favorite dishes with the new ingredients, but he’d milk this as much as he could for the time being. “ _Yes_ , Lance, I’ll make you _Tutu’_ s pineapple upside-down cake for your birthday.”

 

“Fuck _yeah_!”

 

“Lance.”

 

“Sorry, Shiro: you’ll understand when you taste it yourself.”

 

“Speaking of which,” interjected Allura, deftly wielding a serving knife to remove a slice of the cake and place it on a plate, “would you like to do the honors, Hunk?”

 

He obliged, inhaling deeply to gather the scent of lilikoi and coconut in his sinuses before taking a bite. It was more or less what he expected: the flavor was closer than anything he’d managed to achieve by experimenting with alien foods and spices, but the artificiality somewhat persisted and the texture, as always, wasn’t quite right. But it was a start, and considering the situation Lance and Allura had done a wonderful job preparing the cake, and the lightness and contentment he felt rumbling in his chest made the familiar flavors all the more satisfying on his tongue.

 

“Oh _maaaaan_ ,” he moaned, dipping his pinky into the icing that had caught on the plate rim and popping it into his mouth. “I think we’re all gonna have to hit the gym a little harder once we’re done with this.”

 

“Oh, most certainly, my dear boy,” agreed Coran, twirling his moustache, “but we shall save that for another quintant: today, as per Number Five’s request, we’re taking shore leave at the National Resort of Betelguese for, what was the phrase? ‘Stars, waterboarding, and the most irritating substance known to man?’”

 

“Sun, surf, and sand,” Pidge corrected wryly, pulling a pair of glasses she’d manufactured for working with the laser cutter seemingly out of nowhere. “And maybe a bit of gambling: I heard that their casino is phenomenal.”

 

“Wait, we’re going to the _beach_?” exclaimed Lance, looking in between Coran and Pidge with a child-like excitement in his eyes.

 

“Well the water is purple and there are two suns instead of one in the Baylaux System, but yes, we are going to a space beach,” Pidge chirped, “so get your stuff pulled together and pack a bag, because Allura’s warping us there in half a varga.”

 

Lance squealed in excitement, hugging the person closest to him—who happened to be Matt, who seemed to sigh in resignation as the life was briefly squeezed out of him—before practically jumping Pidge, wrapping his arms around her waist as they barreled into the couch.

 

“I don’t know what illegal stuff you did to pull this off, Pidge, but I am simultaneously awed and terrified and grateful, holy shit—“

 

“Just as you should be,” she quipped, sending Hunk and her brother a knowing grin.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Pidge picked at the strap of her one-piece bathing suit as she waited for the suntan lotion to dry, curled well within the cast shadow left by the umbrella as the hot suns bore down from overhead. Lance, Matt, and Hunk were already splashing about in the waves, occasionally picking up bits of seaweed that looked like pink polka-dotted water balloons and hurling them at each other, both of them collapsing in giggles whenever one managed to hit its target and deflate with a sound that was not dissimilar from that made by a whoopee cushion.

 

Keith groaned as one landed near the perimeter of his towel, releasing a cloud of smelly purple gas that easily wafted into the shaded area of their beach chair fortress.

 

“Sorry, Keith!” Lance cackled, not sounding sorry at all when the red paladin shot him a venomous look.

 

“Come on, dude, you’ve gotta admit that it’s pretty funny,” chucked Pidge as she took a sip of her juice. “Plus, you’ll get right back at them when your baby skin finally finishes soaking in that sunblock.”

 

“Speak for yourself,” Keith shot back, earning himself a rude hand gesture for his trouble. When Shiro’s familiar, tired reprimand didn’t ensue, Keith cursed his luck: of course he wasn’t here to call Pidge out on her bullshit. He let out a sigh, his overgrown bangs fluttering in his face before settling back over his forehead.

 

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to go out there with your hair in your face like that,” teased Pidge, nudging Keith’s leg with her foot.

 

Keith held up his wrist, the red hair tie around it serving as explanation enough for his plans. Pidge leaned forward, seizing his forearm with one hand while snatching the hair tie with the other.

 

“Sit up, I’m going to braid your hair,” she demanded. “Up-up-up! No buts. I’m bored, my fidget has sand and shit in it, and I need to do something with my hands.”

 

He relented, slouching back in a terrible demonstration of posture until his back was pressed against her knees. She began combing through his hair with her fingers, pulling his bangs back behind his ears as the dark locks fell almost to his shoulder blades.

 

“If you give me a man-bun then the others will never find your body,” he muttered, and Pidge lightly flicked his back in response.

 

“I’m not gonna give you a fucking man-bun. _Jesus_ , Keith: I’m a terrible person, but even I wouldn’t make you look like you sell $8 pressed juices from a gentrified corner store in LA.”

 

Keith snorted, cracking a smile. “You’d have to make them into dreads before you put it up in a bun if you wanted to do that.”

 

“I think at that point we’d just kick you out of Voltron.”

 

He chuckled, and for a few moments the two fell into silence, the gentle lapping of the waves and the call of some Belteguese seabird punctuating their silent contemplations.

 

“Your hair is really soft.”

 

“Uhh…thanks?”

 

“Lance’s is softer, but yours is good, too.”

 

Keith raised an eyebrow as he peeked over his shoulder, the movement gentle enough to not ruin Pidge’s handiwork.

 

“But I guess you already knew that, eh, Keith?”

 

The tips of his ears flushed a brilliant red, and Pidge couldn’t help but cackle at her friend’s expense as he buried his face in his knees.

 

Ever since the incident with the Qijitii Court, Keith had been struggling to come to terms with certain feelings that had popped up as a result of the incident: for awhile he’d kept it all inside, convinced that he couldn’t confide in anyone immediately available without serious consequences (Shiro was TiredTM and didn’t need one more goddamned thing on his plate, Coran would probably end up telling him all about the ‘escapades’ of his youth, Hunk would _definitely_ blab to Lance, Matt would _also_ definitely blab to Lance, Allura would probably just encourage him to tell Lance how he felt, and Pidge would just make fun of him forever), but bottling it all up had only worked for so long. Eventually he’d conceded to the fact that he had to tell _someone_ , and Pidge’s teasing and brutal honesty had been the least of five evils.

 

“You’re the worst,” he muttered, slouching even more to give Pidge a difficult time as she attempted to separate his hair into sections. “I should have never told you about that.”

 

“Dude, you and I both know that you would have exploded if you hadn’t told _somebody_ ,” she chided. “Accepting that you have feelings for someone is the first step in completely quashing your emotions down so that your heart can become cold, barren, and devoid of feeling.”

 

“Not helping, Pidge.”

 

“Well it’s what you’re doing at the moment, and I’m just telling you like it is, hon.”

 

“Okay, wiseass, so what do you do when _you_ have feelings for someone?”

 

She barked out a laugh. “Well when I was in first grade I kissed Matt Dollette on the lips at the bus stop, and in third I bit Baron McBrown on the arm because he logged me out of KidPix before I could save my file. In middle school I slipped an anonymous love letter into Imogene Knapp’s locker, but she couldn’t read my writing because my dysgraphia was really bad at that point and thought it was from a guy.”

 

“And how did that work out for you?”

 

Pidge shrugged. “The feelings never lasted long, and then I just didn’t really get them anymore, especially because we’re so busy all the time and never settle in one place for too long. I don’t think I’m the kind of person that’s going to end up with someone, anyway, so it’s kind of beside the point.”

 

The last statement seemed to catch Keith’s attention, and he wheeled around to face her, searching for any signs of emotionality.

 

If anything she seemed somewhat resigned to that fact, and from what he could see the concept didn’t seem to bother Pidge all that much.

 

But before he could delve into it further, Coran’s familiar lilt carried over across the sandy dunes as he chatted animatedly with a complete stranger about Unilu pirate bartering negotiation strategies, Shiro and Allura not far behind him with a deli bag overflowing with local snacks and something that more or less resembled a cooler.

 

“God, look at them,” Pidge muttered, chucking as she motioned towards the latter two with her chin. “They look like they walked straight out of a goddamned catalogue.”

 

Keith couldn’t help but agree: they were entirely focused on one another, the proximity of their perfect figures framed by the balance of their space deli finds and the crisp lines of their beach wear. For the first time in what seemed like months Shiro looked like he’d actually managed to sleep through the night, and Allura’s flawless brown skin positively glowed under the light of the red and yellow suns.

 

Pidge couldn’t help but roll her eyes when something fell out of Allura’s bag and, within about three seconds, half a dozen beachgoers had scrambled to return it to her.

 

“If only negotiations with intergalactic diplomats were that easy,” the green paladin quipped, an edge of annoyance to her voice as she finished the braid and tied it off with the hair band. “Just bat your eyelashes and have an entire army at your beck and call.”

 

“Just like Helen of Troy,” Keith quipped, but he didn’t miss Pidge’s attitude this time.

 

“Fuckin’ nerd.”

 

He scoffed, feigning offense. “I read _The Iliad_ for the gay subtext, not an allegorical knowledge of Greek epics.”

 

“Dude, the fact that you know what ‘allegorical’ means proves my point.”

 

“It was an unexpected side effect.”

 

“Yeah, well maybe you should see if Lance enjoys your big, long words as much as he seems to like your big, long—“

 

“Shiro! Allura! You’re back!” Keith exclaimed, his voice squeaking just a little too loudly as he tried to drown Pidge out (“I was gonna say ‘mullet,’ Keith, _yeesh_ : get your mind out of the gutter.”).

 

Shiro raised an eyebrow, sending Pidge a pointed look as she glanced up innocently at them. “Yeah, did you miss us?”

 

“I’m finding that the amount of time that I have spent with adults today has been severely lacking,” Keith deadpanned, motioning to his braid and inadvertently towards Pidge as he gestured behind himself (Pidge, of course, swore at him under her breath in a particularly creative string of Yiddish so that Shiro wouldn’t bust her).

 

Allura gave Keith a sympathetic look, tilting her head as she assessed him. “Your UV protection protocol seems to have fully activated. Perhaps you could join the boys?”

 

He looked over to see the the blue and yellow paladins plopped down in the sand, Lance arranging a bunch of seashells on Hunk’s stomach as the latter squeezed his tummy to make his belly button ‘talk.’ The frill of seaweed under the ‘face’s’ nose and Hunk’s faked haughty accent indicated that they were definitely mocking that stuffy dignitary they’d had to deal with on their last mission. Matt, of course, was capturing the whole thing on camera.

 

“Point taken,” said Shiro apologetically, but he couldn’t help but chuckle at the pair’s antics as a wave swept their work away. “So do you want to talk about taxes, the mortgage, or your retirement plan?”

 

Pidge cackled as Keith’s face only soured further, but before he could grumble at Shiro, Allura had already pulled him aside and asked him what ‘the mortgage’ was.

“Ah, numbers four and five! ” Coran interjected, and Pidge prayed to God for mercy when the orange-haired man strutted over to the umbrella in little more than something that looked like a men’s Speedo. Her mom had warned her about these sorts of things when they’d all gone to the beach in Germany over the summer the year before Matt had been accepted to the Garrison, but surely the Alteans’ standard-issue swim gear was as conservative as their everyday clothing—? “Shall we join Hunk and Lance in the—oh, how _splendid_! It seems that numbers two and three are attempting to engage in a Gnorree fecundity ritual!”

 

Before she could tell herself not to look (because Pidge wasn’t even remotely interested in seeing Lance and Hunk engage in anything that even _resembled_ a mating dance), Pidge had whipped her head around to see that Hunk had submerged himself up to the chin and Lance was attempting to hook his long legs around his friend’s shoulders, clutching his thick neck for support as he hoisted himself up.

 

“Check it _out_!” Lance hollered, laughing as Hunk resumed his full height in the water, a skinny ankle in each hand. “Razzle dazzle time!”

 

“Oh, me next, me next!” exclaimed Matt, continuing to fill the camera with photos. “Well, uh, unless the princess requires a partner?”

 

“In your _dreams_ ,” muttered Pidge, rolling her eyes as Allura smiled nervously, looking this way and that as if seeking an excuse to not partake. When she came up empty (Shiro had all but buried himself in the sand to avoid her gaze), Pidge sighed and leaped out of her spot, shaking some of the sand off of her swim trunks before she joined her brother at the water’s edge, a conniving grin catching at her lips.

 

“You still have about two and a half years’ worth of obligatory older sibling favors to make up for, you nerd—,” she quipped, barreling into Matt with just enough force to yield a soft _oof!_ “—so pay up!”

 

Within a few moments Pidge and her brother had managed to mimic Lance and Hunk’s pose, the pairs facing each other head-on as they sized one another up. Of course, Hunk and Lance together were almost a foot taller than their opponents, but the Holt siblings hardly balked at their odds: Lance was notoriously ticklish, and if she could maneuver around his lanky arms then she would be good to go.

 

“Ready to have your ass served on a platter, pretty boy?” Pidge jeered, puffing out her chest in mock goading as Lance scoffed.

 

“Not if I—uh, serve yours first!”

 

“Wow, you really nailed the comeback there, buddy.”

 

“Hunk _,_ we are on the same tea—oh man, no, _nope_ , not the tickle hands, _not the tickle hands_ —! ”

 

Needless to day, the Holt siblings easily took the first round.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“Come _on_ , Keith! We _have_ to do the original Voltron formation at least one round!”

 

The red paladin folded his arms from the shoreline as he regarded Hunk and Pidge in the water, the latter adjusting their perch on the former’s shoulders as Matt wrestled with Lance in the waves.

 

“Why can’t you just have Matt and Lance go again?”

 

“Because we defeated them, _duh_ ,” muttered Pidge, smoothing Hunk’s hair out of his eyes so that he could give Keith the best smoulder he could manage.

 

“It’s one round, dude,” he assured, allowing his lower lip to quiver for added effect. “Please? For me on my birthday?”

 

Keith groaned, rubbing his palms into his eyes.

 

“ _Fine_ ,” he growled, stomping into the water and submerging himself quickly to get himself acclimated to the temperature. “But when Lance has a fit about having to carry me on his shoulders—“

 

“Who said anything about _you_ being on _my_ shoulders?” interrupted Lance, narrowing his eyes at Pidge and Hunk as he pointed his thumb to his chest. “Whenever it comes to Keith and me I’m _always_ on top.”

 

Pidge spluttered, nearly choking on her spit as Hunk guffawed below her and slapped the surface of the water, nearly curling in on himself as he laughed. Keith had all but turned purple and submerged himself up to his nose in the waves, glaring at the blue paladin with a special kind of hatred when he seemed confused as to why his response had yielded such a strong reaction.

 

“What, was it something I said?”

 

Matt facepalmed, steeling himself for impact as he quietly informed Lance that he’d tell him about his poor diction choice later. When Pidge finally regained control of her diaphragm, she gestured at Lance and Keith before waving her finger in a circle.

 

“Nope, sorry Lance,” she chuckled. “O.G. Team Voltron requires O.G. positions, which means that Keith’s on your shoulders this time.”

 

The blue paladin looked like he was about to complain, but seemed to think better of it when he went over the logistics in his head. Keith had a lot more upper body strength than he did, anyway, which would increase their chances against the thrice undefeated green and yellow duo. As per usual, his competitive spirit won out in the end.

 

“Argh, foiled again! Come on, Keith, let’s get this over with.”

 

Coran, Allura, Shiro, and Matt watched from the shoreline as Keith awkwardly arranged himself on Lance’s shoulders, grumbling under his breath and looking particularly pained when the blue paladin clutched at his thighs as he lifted his body out of the water. Keith had half expected Lance to topple over the moment the water’s buoyancy was absent to support his weight (he’d gained some muscle weight since his Marmora training, after all), but he stood tall and steadfast, cracking his neck this way and that as he got used to the load. Pidge gave the red paladin an impish grin as the back of Lance’s head nestled against his crotch, yielding a none-too-subtle flinch and a bitten lip.

 

“Stop squirming,” Keith hissed, stilling Lance’s head with both of his hands mid-neck roll, and to spite him Lance just made the neck roll slower, his gaze meeting Keith’s as he looked up with a sneer that was far too similar to Pidge’s for his liking.

 

“What, Keith? Is this the first time you’ve had a man between your legs?”

 

Lance had expected Keith to splutter, but instead he leaned down and whispered just loud enough for the other boy to hear.

 

“No, but they usually aren’t this talkative.”

 

Lance.exe stopped working.

 

“Come _on_ , you two: quit your flirting and get over here!” whined Pidge, arranging her arms in a fighting stance as Hunk stabilized his position below her. “My butt’s starting to fall asleep!”

 

“All right, all right, quit your yelling,” Keith drawled, forcing down the blush that was creeping its way to his ears ( _why did I say that why didIsay thatWHY DIDISAYTHAT_ ). “Come on, Lance: let’s get this over with.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“W-what? No! I—I demand a re-match! I was distracted!”

 

Pidge and Hunk looked at each other, a wordless exchange between them.

 

“Best two out of three then, Lance?” offered Hunk.

 

“You’re on!”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

On the seventh round, Keith and Lance finally won.

 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like this story? Leave a comment, a kudos, whatevs! I like to see what y'all think!


	21. Year 3 (part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNINGS: an injury occurs at the end of the chapter, so there are mentions of blood. Pidge also has a flashback to a canonical event in which she watches someone die.**

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

 

Lance snorted, prodding the porous object in the sand with the piece of driftwood he’d designated as his walking stick.

 

“Pidge, it’ a rock with holes in it, you can’t possibly expect it t—ooooOOOAH!”

 

A series of jagged spikes—each almost three inches long and about the width of a pencil—shot out of the pores, terrifying Lance into a rather blood-curdling yelp as the creature scuttled back into the ocean, the impaled driftwood trailing behind it. He hid behind Hunk’s massive form, but his friend wasn’t faring much better, sending Pidge an eyeroll as she cackled in amusement at their expense.

 

The blue paladin clutched at his chest, swearing in Spanish under his breath as he gathered his bearings.

 

“After that incident on Gol, I’m surprised that you would jut pick up an unfamiliar object without checking,” Pidge muttered, not looking up from the holo-screen projected from her wrist to admonish her friend. “These scanners were built into out armor for a reason.”

 

“Yeah, but you’re the only one who thought to replicate the software on to a separate device when our armor isn’t available,” Lance muttered, giving an impressive pout as he searched the lavender-colored sand for another poke-to-see-if-it’s-dangerous stick. “Back on Varadero, the only thing Carlos, Maria, Baltasár, and I had to _chequearlo_ was one of those claw thingies with the D-shaped squeezy handle at the end, and we managed just fine.”

 

“I nearly gave my mom a heart attack when I picked up a cone snail I’d found in the tidepools back home,” added Hunk, scratching behind his ear. “In retrospect I think a pinch from a hermit crab was far better than a harpoon full of deadly venom, but Mama said that I screamed so loud that she couldn’t tell which for a moment.”

 

“Wait, we’re talking about Earth here?” squeaked Lance, still cowering behind his friend.

 

“Yeah, I think I’ve heard of those,” added Pidge nonchalantly, still scrolling through her growing database of Betelguese organisms. “Matt had to do a book report on a venomous animal back in middle school and it was either the cone snail or the platypus.”

 

“ _Wait_ wait wait wait: platypuses—platipy, platipes—ugh, whatever—are _poisonous_?”

 

“Venomous,” corrected Hunk off-handedly, sifting through a pile of coarse sand with a stick. “And only the males. They have these little spurs on their ankles.”

 

“How do you _know_ this stuff?”

 

“My uncle kept the Discovery Channel on in the auto body shop a lot—oh, hey, look at this!”

 

The end of Hunk’s stick dug into the sand, prying out something that looked like a small, off-green tusk. “Pidge, is it safe to touch?”

 

She squinted at her screen for a moment before giving the go-ahead. “The scanner says it’s some sort of bone, probably from this place’s equivalent of a dolphin or a whale? It’s safe, though.”

 

Hunk picked it up and rinsed it under the water, cleaning away the sand to reveal the object’s smooth, polished surface. It was just large enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and about as thick as his pinkie along its thinnest edge.

 

“Dude, that’s awesome!” Lance exclaimed, tapping the bone with his finger and leaning his head down to scrutinize it further. “If you find another one can I have it for my collection? I was gonna grab that one with all the holes in it, but it turned out to be a death-rock, so…”

 

He trailed off, smiling sheepishly.

 

“Yeah, man, for sure!” Hunk replied, glancing around until his eyes rested on Pidge’s armband. “Actually, Pidge, can you configure the settings on your scanner to pick up larger items with the same or a similar chemical signature to this one?”

 

“What do you think I’ve been doing these past two minutes?” she quipped, inputting the final information before she summoned up a radar screen with several blinking targets that corresponded to various positions on the beach. “The material has some interesting conductive properties that I want to fiddle around with next time I’m in the lab, so I kinda want some, too.”

 

“What, are you n’ Hunk gonna make another death ray?”

 

“Lance, the plasma cutter isn’t a goddamn _death ray_ …”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

They found seven pieces in all, each comfortably fitting in the palms of their hands, before Hunk noticed that Pidge’s skin was beginning to look a little red and advised that they all go back to the shade to re-apply sunscreen and grab a snack.

 

Under the protection of the umbrella, Pidge inspected a dainty, circular piece that Hunk had found, admiring the organic grooves and imperfections as she traced along them with her thumb. It reminded her of her first fidget—a worry stone that she’d purchased with her lunch money when her school had gone on a field trip to the Garden of the Gods in the fourth grade—but the disk-like bone was feather-light and warm in her hand, and the roughness of its edges betrayed a sense of controlled unpredictability with each stroke of her fingers.

 

“You can have that one, if you’d like,” offered Hunk, plopping down beside her with a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair freshly wild and damp with seawater.

 

“Back from another dip?” she asked, placing the bone beside her on her towel as she hugged her knees.

 

“Yeah, Lance challenged Shiro and Allura to a chicken fight and we got absolutely obliterated,” he laughed, the sound deep and warm in his belly. “Allura pretty much just pushed me over during the last round, and then promptly forgot that Shiro was still on her shoulders when she got out of the water.”

 

“ _God_ , I would happily pay a thousand GAC for Allura to hurtle my frail flesh prison into the nearest sun.”

 

“What?”

 

“Oh, is that lucinerite?”

 

Coran had (thankfully) wrapped a towel around his waist before padding over, bending at the knees to inspect the piece of bone resting idly by Pidge’s side. She and Hunk looked at one another and the bone fragment before regarding the orange-haired Altean, each of them shrugging non-committedly.

 

“My scanner said it was a bone of an animal native to this planet,” said Pidge, her brow furrowing as she attempted to remember the name. “I think it was called a cojira?”

 

“Oh, a cújira! They look very much like your planet’s dolphins, except for the spines and the bioluminescence and the fact that they give birth through the mouth rather than the—“

 

“Wait, these things _glow_?” exclaimed Hunk, picking up the bone to examine it further.        

 

“Why yes! Lucinerite—the local name for cújira bone—channels quintessence in a way not dissimilar to Balmera crystals, though to a much lesser capacity: my grandfather and his research team actually experimented with them as an alternative to Balmera crystals, but ultimately they were deemed less efficient and altogether less practical, given that we’d need the quintessence from about a million individuals to power a single wormhole jump and, well, I don’t believe the Belteguese people would be altogether happy if we stripped their oceans of a creature that was once sacred to them.”

 

Hunk bit his lip, glancing out to the sea. “Should we—should we, uh, put them back, then? I wouldn’t want us to offend anyone or disrupt their ecosystem or—“

 

“No, my dear boy! As long as you’re not carting them off by the ship-load there are plenty to go around! In fact, I saw some kiosks over by the snack bars that sold jewelry made out of carved pieces of lucinerite: the native craftsmen here have been making them for thousands of decapheebs, passing patterns and traditions down from parent to child. Of course, they’re seldom cut by hand anymore, except among the most traditional of the Belteguese, who gift them to and exchange them with friends and family: in fact I, erm, had an _acquaintance_ from Belteguese a few decapheebs before the war started that gifted me one, but that is a story for another day…”

 

Coran cleared his throat, looking slightly sheepish. “Well, in any case, you two are probably more interested in its properties as a mineral rather than as a token of sentimental value: if you hold that round one up to the light, you might be able to see a shape that resembles your Milky Way.”

 

Pidge looked skeptical, but nevertheless wiped the lucinerite on her towel, tentatively scooting to the edge so that she could hold it up to the light of the yellow sun. She fished her glasses out of her knapsack with the other hand as Hunk peered curiously over her shoulder, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the brightness.

 

And sure enough, as she tilted the bone just so, a loose spiral just slightly more opaque than the matrix in which it was encased winked into view.

 

“Whoa!” Hunk exclaimed, a broad smile blooming to life on his face, when he looked at Pidge to gauge her reaction he could tell the that gears in her head were already turning to figure out how and why such a feature existed in an aquatic alien creature’s bone.

 

Of course, Coran had known the both of them long enough to pick up on Pidge’s ‘processing face’, though he waited patiently for her to acknowledge him and ask for an explanation before he went on.

 

“These are the bones that make up the lateral process of the cújira: I believe they might be the equivalent of a mammalian vertebra? Though instead of a cord of cells that runs all the way up and down the lateral process, the electrical signals that are sent out by the brain are transformed into quintessence and sent directly through the bone in specialized, highly dense channels.”

 

“And those channels follow a spiral shape to accommodate the movement of the cújira’s tail in the water?” asked Pidge.

 

“Yes, but it is particularly important for signaling to other members of their pod as well,” added Coran, sketching a diagram in the sand with his fingers. “The energy signals are conducted through the water in a radiating pattern around the creature’s body, otherwise they’d only be able to ‘see’ in one direction!”

 

“Back on Earth a lot of species of cetaceans use sound to communicate,” said Pidge, smiling fondly as she sketched a whale in the sand with her finger (she had since given the piece of lucinerite to Hunk to inspect further on his own).

 

“Yes, we intercepted a transmission from them while Allura and I were in cryo-stasis: if I recall correctly it was something along the lines of ‘so long and thanks for all the fish?’ Are they as talkative with humans as they are with Alteans?”

 

Hunk and Pidge looked at one another and, conceding that this wasn’t even the weirdest thing they’d heard this week, simply shrugged.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

A few hours later the second of the two suns had dipped below the horizon, and the group had settled down and changed into warmer clothes for the brisk beach evening. Allura and Coran were nursing a nunvil each, while the humans had settled on either a water pouch or some of the hot ‘chocolate’ that Hunk had whipped up back at the castle and kept in a thermos specifically for the occasion. Coran had produced some newfangled Altean camping device that he’d inherited from his difficult terrain training as a cadet that more or less functioned as a large oil lamp, bathing the group in a warm blue light that was hot enough to keep Pidge and Hunk’s toes toasty as they peeked out from underneath a shared blanket, and light enough that Hunk felt confident experimentally whittling away at a smaller piece of lucinerite with a pocket knife he’d purchased at a space mall about a year ago. Keith, or course, saw a knife and was immediately interested, and peeked over from his spot next to Shiro as the yellow paladin worked the material.

 

“You whittle?” he asked curiously, tilting his head to get a better idea of what Hunk was making. Pidge peered over too, bored with whatever conversation Matt was carrying on with Lance.

 

He laughed in response, shaking his head non-committedly.

 

“Not really: just curious is all,” he replied. “My birth mom is Samoan, but my other mom is part Maori and we went to New Zealand one summer to visit her brothers for Christmas. They had these pendants made out of whale bone, and I thought of them when we found this lucinerite stuff and wanted to see if it would hold a cut. Have any advice for me?”

 

Keith smiled, gesturing for the knife and material until Hunk placed them in his hands.

 

“When you make a cut, make sure to angle the blade and the direction of your cut away from your body,” he demonstrated, mocking a shaving motion before he pressed the blade down and, with some effort, a sliver came loose and fell into the sand. “It looks like it’ll hold a carved shape: just don’t push too hard, or you’ll end up slipping and nicking yourself or damaging the material.”

 

“So kind of like peeling a carrot?” asked Pidge, mocking the motions with her own hands as she observed. Keith made a face as he handed the knife and the piece of lucinerite back to Hunk, but nodded.

 

“Like a carrot, but tougher and thicker.”

 

“So how do _you_ know this stuff?”

 

The red paladin looked like he’d been hoping to avoid the question, but Hunk’s pleading pout proved effective a second time that day, and he sighed.

 

“My dad taught me,” he muttered, avoiding their gazes and looking toward the ocean. “He took woodshop in high school and knew a few things. Made me a miniature Noah’s ark with all of that animals out of balsa wood when I was a kid.”

 

“Wait, were you raised Christian?”

 

“Pidge, my dad was half-Korean and from Texas.”

 

“Your dad was from _Texas_?”

 

Hunk snorted behind his hand, eyes squinting in mirth as Pidge regarded him with a look that hovered somewhere between outrage and incredulity.

 

“What—why are you laughing?” asked Keith, sounding mildly offended. “Is it really that funny?”

 

“No, dude, I’m not laughing at you, per se,” spluttered Hunk, his chuckles subsiding. “I think Pidge is confused because we’ve known each other and have been living in a flying castle together for more than two years and this is the first you’ve talked about your family.”

 

“We were beginning to think that Galra are parthenogenic, or that you budded off of your parent or someth— _ow_! Hunk!”

 

“ _Keith is not a bacterium_!” Hunk hissed, smiling nervously as the young man in question raised an eyebrow.

 

“No _duh_ , he’s multicellular and has membrane-bound organelles! And you’re a total fucking liar, Hunk: I know you were laughing because you were imagining Keith with an Asian baby bowl cut and talking with a Southern drawl.”

 

The grin squirming its way onto Hunk’s mouth betrayed his guilt, and he held his shaking head in his hands.

 

“I’ve been made,” he whined dramatically, beginning to laugh again. “I’m sorry, Keith, I can’t help it: something about baby Keith-sized cowboy boots is making me feel some very strong emotions.”

 

The red paladin stuttered and blushed, hunching up his shoulders to hide behind the collar of his jacket.

 

“Who broke Keith?”

 

Lance smirked in amusement as he poked Keith in the side, laughing out loud when he growled in response.

 

“Baby Keith with a bowl cut and cowboy booties,” supplied Pidge, moving deftly out of the way and cackling with mirth when Keith reached out to slap her playfully, missing the fleeting look of complete and utter fondness on the blue paladin’s face as he did so.

 

“You two are the _worst_ ,” Keith mumbled, crossing his arms with a dramatic huff, but the edge of amusement in his voice betrayed his true feelings.

 

“We love you too, dude,” cooed Hunk, throwing his arm around him as Pidge crawled over Keith’s lap to sandwich him in on the other side, dragging the blanket with her to cover the three pairs of legs. Lance scooted his butt over until he was pressed against Hunk’s free side, making a big deal out of maneuvering the big guy’s arm around his shoulders as he wormed his toes under the blanket.

 

Matt managed to snap about a dozen photographs of the scene before Pidge threatened to throw him in the ocean.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

“We should play Bucket o’ Fun.”

 

“ _Matt_ —“

 

Shiro sighed in exasperation, running his metal hand through his fringe as he laughed under his breath.

 

“Didn’t you two play that when you were at the Garrison?” asked Pidge, smiling shrewdly as she deflected Shiro’s shutdown.

 

“Yeah, that was the time that Shiro and I had to sneak into Iverson’s quarters and—“

 

“ _Matt!”_

“What is ‘Bucket Oh-fun?’” asked Hunk, scratching his forehead. “Some sort of truth-or-dare game?”

 

“Sort of? You write stuff on slips of paper, like ‘give the person to your right a noogie’ or ‘When was the last time you did something illegal?’ or ‘For the next five turns, refer to everyone you talk to as ‘Master’’, put them in a bucket or a hat, and pass it around the group until you get bored. If you don’t want to do what the paper asks, then you have to eat it.”

 

Lance rubbed his hands together, a conniving grin spreading across his face as he gave Pidge a challenging look.

 

“You’re gonna be crapping paper for a week, McClain,” Pidge snarked, reaching back to rifle through Hunk’s duffle bag and fishing out a stack of neon yellow Post-It notes she’d procured for him from the Space Mall as well as a handful of pens.

 

“Specimen labels for plants,” Hunk supplied as way of explanation for his strangely specific belongings, smiling sheepishly as Shiro let out a low groan.

 

“Keep it PG,” warned the black paladin, taking extra care to look warningly at the Holt siblings as well as Lance as he did so.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

They ended up using Allura’s paladin helmet as their ‘bucket,’ as even her sun hat wasn’t sufficiently large to contain the fifty or so folded up Post-It notes that the group had managed to write for the activity, and as the whole thing was Matt’s idea he was the first to make a selection from the pot.

 

He cursed under his breath as the stickiness of the paper hindered his efforts to unwrap it, smoothing the piece out on this knee when he finally managed to wrestle it open.

 

“’What is one ice cream flavor you never understood?’” he read aloud, glancing up to pout at Lance when he recognized the handwriting. “Lance, dude, this is so tame.”

 

“Hey, it’s a valid question!” he squeaked, folding his arms defiantly. “Besides, if it was anything bad I’m pretty sure that Shiro would bury me up to my neck in the sand as punishment.”

 

“You’d still be able to talk, which wouldn’t do any of us any good,” muttered Keith, just loud enough for Pidge to hear him and cackle in response.

 

“Answer the damn question, Matt.”

 

“Fine, sis, _sheesh_ : I’m gonna have to go with pistachio.”

 

Pidge gave a dramatic gasp, shaking her head as she pointed accusingly at him.

 

“Nope, we are not related, and I’ve officially disowned you.”

 

“You already disowned me for not liking pineapple on my pizza, Pidge.”

 

“Yeah, well, I’m un-disowning you and then re-disowning you, so there. Can you pass me the space chips?”

 

It was Shiro’s turn next, and by how much he squinted to decipher the handwriting on the slip, this one was definitely in Pidge’s messy scrawl.

 

“Complement the feet of the person to your right.”

 

The black paladin pinched the bridge of his nose, releasing a breath as the younger paladins cackled at their leader’s expense.

 

“Coran, your, um. Your toenails are, uh, are very neatly trimmed.”

 

“Thank you, my boy! Now send over that helmet, let’s see what I can come up with—ah, here we are! ‘What is something that you’d like to do in your lifetime that you haven’t done yet?’ Oh, there are far too many, far too many, but one that’s been on my top 50 list for a few decapheebs is taking a dip in the sulfur springs in the northern mountains of the planet Termaskque. Wouldn’t dream of doing that to you all, though: I’m quite sure I’d smell like a pheeb-old _klordúr_ for the better part of a quintant if I did so! But no matter: here you are, Princess!”

 

She gingerly removed a crumpled slip from the top of the pile, unfurling it neatly in her gentle hands. “Describe a shared experience you have had with one other person in the circle that makes you smile.”

 

Pidge groaned, leaning into Hunk’s shoulder. “You are soooo sappy,” she muttered, stuffing another handful of crisps into her mouth as he laughed.

 

“Well let’s see: I quite enjoyed the food goo fight we had when Coran and I were training up the paladins,” she offered, laughing under her breath.

 

“That’s a good one, Allura.”

 

“Yeah, I had food goo in my hair for weeks.”

 

“Princess, if I may, the paper does say _one_ other person.”

 

“Indeed it does, Coran: well, then, I must confess I quite enjoyed the ‘spa day’ with Lance at the Space Mall,” she chuckled, her smile wide and radiant as Lance exclaimed and shot her finger guns. “He looked quite ridiculous with all of the creams on his face.”

 

“Hey, my skin was _glowing_ for a week after that!” Lance retorted good-naturedly, pointing his own thumb to his chest. “ _Totally_ worth the weird chafing that the body wash gave me—oh, I guess it’s my turn! All right, get me a good one, get me a good one, come on— _aha_! ‘Describe your ideal significant other.’ Oh man, uh—“

 

Lance blushed, picking nervously at a recently healed scar on his hand, the slip of paper clenched tightly in his fist. “Well, uh, I guess there has to be some hypothetical person out there that’s willing to tolerate me first but, uh, whoever they are, they’ve gotta be someone that gets along with my family, obviously, and it wouldn’t hurt if they also had nice legs… oh, and hearing them laugh just makes me fall in love with them more and more. That one’s important.”

 

He smiled sheepishly, nestling himself further into the blanket as Hunk cooed and wrapped an arm around his lanky friend, reaching over to take the bowl and select a slip. Pidge gave Keith an intentional look as the other two boys were distracted, smirking as she ran her hands down her legs and pointed at him suggestively until he nearly choked on his beverage.

 

“All right, all right, I know, my turn. Here we go—oh.”

 

He looked at Lance as if betrayed, playfully shoving him back-first into the sand with a well-placed hand to the sternum, but Lance had seen the slip of paper and started snorting and giggling under his breath, turning his head to send Pidge a gleeful smirk.

 

“’Pidge sits in your lap for three turns,’” Hunk read, rolling his eyes and stifling back laughter as he tried to focus on the rest, “’and each turn you have to imitate Santa and ask her what she wants for Christmas.”

 

Just as Lance was beginning to resume his seating position Pidge shoved him down again, getting up to put a foot on his chest to keep him pinned.

 

“I’m Jewish, you schmuck,” she said dryly, but let him go to go plop herself on the ground between the vee made by Hunk’s legs, leaning back into his chest to steal his body heat.

 

“Ho ho ho, motherfuckers,” she muttered, just loud enough for the younger paladins to hear her and burst out laughing.

 

“Now Katie, Santa knows you’ve been a good girl this year,” said Hunk, his fake Santa voice dripping with condescension even as he tried to stifle his own sniggers. “What can Santa get for you?”

 

“A ten foot tall Christmas tree so that I can shove it straight up Lance’s—“

 

Shiro cleared his throat in warning.

 

“—nostril. Geez, Hunk, you’re like a space heater.”

 

“That’s ‘cause he’s the Hunka Burnin’ Loooove~” chimed Lance, snuggling into his best friend’s side to steal some of his warmth as Pidge reached into the helmet to grab a paper. She passed the receptacle to Keith before she jimmied the paper open, squinting in the low light to read it.

 

“’What’s a bad habit that you have?’” she read, shrugging in nonchalance as she slumped forward and wriggled her toes in front of the light beacon. “I’m a nail biter. Next.”

 

Lance gave her a shit-eating grin, and Pidge rolled her eyes, turning to face Hunk.

 

“Ask we what I want for Christmas, _Santa_.”

 

He did so.

 

“A menorah to shove up Lance’s other nostril. Keith, it’s all you, my dude.”

 

He reached tentatively into the helmet, feeling around until the tips of his fingers brushed a tight wad near the bottom, fishing it out and beginning to unwrap it with thinly veiled trepidation. The back had been completely filled in with ink, as if to keep the contents on the other side obscured from view to the rest of the group.

 

“Dude, this isn’t a Roman decimation,” quipped Pidge, adjusting her glasses matter-of-factly as she tilted her head in the red paladin’s direction. “If you don’t want to do whatever it say or tell us then you can—oh.”

 

Keith had stared at the slip of paper for all of a second before shoving the entire article in his mouth, but even he wasn’t quick enough to avoid Matt’s nosey gaze.

 

“Come _on_ , Keith, you’ve gotta tell us the story of your first kiss!” he begged, practically bouncing in his seat as Keith’s ears proceeded to turn a brilliant shade of red.

 

The red paladin chewed the paper, grimacing around the acrid taste of the ink before promptly spitting it out onto the sand. He coughed and gagged, grabbing a water bottle to take a hefty swig before he glared at the rest of the group.

 

“What the _hell_ , Matt! You covered that piece of paper in ink on purpose!” he spat, gesturing to the saliva-coated wad with his arms. The accused simply shrugged: he couldn’t deny it, after all.

 

“An age-old Holt tactic,” muttered Shiro, glaring at Matt accusingly as he folded his arms. “When we were at the Garrison I got one like that, and even though I managed to choke the thing down my tongue was blue for two days.”

 

“What was on the paper?” asked Lance, his eyes alight with curiosity.

 

“…I’d rather not say.”

 

Matt laughed, holding his stomach with one hand as he clapped Shiro on the back with the other. “Come on, Keith, your first kiss can’t have been that bad: if it makes you feel any better I’ll tell my first kiss story. I was in, like, fifth grade and all of the jocks were picking on one of my nerd friends, so I stood up for her and got knocked around for my trouble. Before we were called in from recess she thanked me with a kiss.”

 

“That was Inéz, right?” said Pidge, smirking as her brother blushed.

 

“My eldest sister’s named Inéz!” Lance exclaimed, a wide smile brimming across his cheeks. “Oh, man, I remember my first kiss: Carlotta Ramirez, sixth grade, behind the curtain in the middle of the school play.”

 

“Carl Mafferty-‘Ahlo, fifth grade, in the alleyway behind my uncle’s auto body shop,” confessed Hunk, laughing and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly when Lance balked at him (“You told me that Carl was a _friend_ , Hunk!”).

 

“Nogo bogo,” Pidge piped up, rolling her eyes. “Never been kissed. Your turn, Keith!”

 

The red paladin balked, biting his lip as he scrolled through a list of childhood acquaintances in his mind, but all he could remember were a few blurred faces, and for the life of him he couldn’t cobble together some generic bullshit story about a playground smooch: the truth and its vividness outweighed everything else, and even as he steeled his nerves and assumed an unyielding resolve, he swore he could taste a familiar strawberry chapstick on his lips.

 

“Lance.”

 

“Yeah, dude?”

 

Keith groaned, burying his chin into his knees as he curled his body into a tight ball.

 

“It was you,” he mumbled, looking positively miserable as he admitted it. “Back in the Qijitii supply closet a year ago? That was—that was my first kiss.”

 

He shoved the helmet full of Post-Its into Matt’s hands, refusing to meet the blue paladin’s gaze as he felt it hot and prickling on the back of his neck. Shiro looked like he was itching to pull Keith aside to talk privately, and Matt stared guiltily into the helmet when the black paladin shot him a withering glare.

 

The silence hung in the air until Hunk cleared his throat, glancing at the tiny paladin in his lap.

 

“Uh, Pidge, what you want for Christmas?”

 

She yawned, not bothering to get out of Hunk’s lap even as her obligation ended. He was warm, she’d just managed to get the blanket to cover the both of them just right.

 

“A break from this nonsense,” she sighed nonchalantly, snuggling deeper into the blankets. “Yo, Shiro, you think you can pass the space chips?”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

They went a few more rounds before Pidge got her wish, but not before her having to tell everyone an embarrassing moment from elementary school (biting a kid that had tried to hug her before asking first) and travelling around the perimeter of the circle to tell everyone an oddly specific complement. They’d pulled out their meals that Shiro, Allura, and Coran had picked up from the deli and supped in relative silence, their mouths too full of food that was not space goo to carry on anything more than idle chatter. In an attempt to pace himself, Hunk continued with his whittling between bites, contemplating the foreign flavors on his tongue as he began to shape the shard of lucinerite into a rough teardrop shape.

 

Pidge looked over from her meal, stuffing a few chips into her mouth before she shuffled over to face him so that their knees were touching.

 

“How is it cutting through the opaque portions versus the translucent ones?” she asked, picking up the piece to inspect it.

 

“The translucent part is actually much tougher to cut though,” he replied, gesturing to a blister that was already beginning to form on his thumb and palm from the friction of the task. “That’s why I’m going to use the spiral in the middle to guide the design.”

 

“So you’ve already decided what it’s gonna be?”

 

Hunk nodded. “Pull up a blank page in your holo-screen. I’ll show you what I have in mind.”

 

She did as he asked, chuckling when she clicked on the imaging app that she’d never used before and a screen popped up that didn’t look dissimilar to MS Paint: even the possible color choices were uncannily alike, if not for the light blue tinge that tinted most of Altean tech.

 

Hunk sketched a ‘J’ in yellow with his finger before he began to conduct a cleaner drawing around it in black, poking his tongue out in concentration as he did his best to make sure that the lines didn’t waver too much. He made one or two corrections before he was satisfied, checking the contour of the piece of lucinerite with the drawing one last time before he sat back.

 

“A _matau_ ,” he explained, gesturing to the elegant shape he’d designed on the screen.

 

“It kinda looks like a fishhook.”

 

“The design is very much influenced by a fishhook,” Hunk explained. “Actually, a simple, well-crafted _matau_ probably could be used as a functional fishhook, especially if it’s made out of a sturdy enough material. It’s one of the designs that my uncles made for me when we visited New Zealand: he told me that they’re sort of like good luck charms, and are meant to ensure the safety of the wearer when they travel across the sea.”

 

“So it’s like a pendant? That’s super neat!” Pidge exclaimed, fumbling at her neckline for the edge of the cord around her neck. She then realized that she’d left her fidget necklace back at the castle, and that the one she’d brought with her was still covered in sand and would require a session in the autoclave before she even looked at it again.

 

“Well, uh, I don’t have it with me, but one of my first fidgets was this pink rubber spiral pendant-thing. I chewed completely through it ages ago, but it had this awesome thing where when it came into contact with heat it would turn orange, and the cord I had it on had these beads that were fun to twist around and would light up when you squeezed them, but—“

 

Pidge caught herself before she picked up too much momentum: Hunk had probably heard her talk about stimmy stuff for the equivalent of a few quintants by now, and what’s more, she’d gone and interrupted him.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“For what?”

 

Hunk had resumed his whittling, looking expectantly at Pidge as he did so. When she didn’t reply, Hunk smiled. “I like it when you talk about things that interest you, Pidge: you get this, this _look_ in your eye, and you do this thing with your hands—“

 

He mimicked the motions of her hand flapping, and for a split second Pidge felt a dread seep into her bones, the fear that he was mocking her jolting her like an ice cube down the back of her shirt. Hunk seemed to sense her mortification, and his tone became profoundly alarmed and apologetic.

 

“No, I don’t mean to—I’m not making fun of—FUCK!”

 

Hearing Hunk swear was like a slap across the face, but Pidge had hardly heard him when the yellow paladin had dropped the knife and, in his haste and stress, had attempted to catch it before it fell.

 

His fingers had closed tightly around the blade rather than the hilt.

 

It took but a moment for the blood to begin trickling down his knuckles and into the sand below, but at the first drop she’d sprung into action, using both of her hands to unfurl Hunk’s iron grip until the knife dropped with a dull thud onto the towel below. Her eyes searched the scene for all but a moment before she locked her gaze on a stack of napkins, grabbing them and shoving them into Hunk’s bloodied fist.

 

“Grip that tight,” she muttered gruffly, kneeling so that she could place Hunk’s forearm on her shoulder and rise to her feet. “No, keep sitting: the elevation is good.”

 

By this time the other members of the team had reacted to Hunk’s outburst, and one by one they’d begun to watch the spectacle before them unfold. They seemed frozen in shock, but when Pidge demanded that someone remove Hunk’s headband and give it to her Lance shook himself out of his daze to do as told, his hands shaking as he fed the strip of orange fabric into her hands. With practiced ease she wrapped the headband around Hunk’s hand, barely flinching when Hunk hissed in pain at the pressure when she secured a tight knot over the wound.

 

“Direct pressure, elevation, pressure point, pressure bandage,” Pidge muttered under her breath, nodding her head with each of the items mentioned. “Direct pressure, elevation, pressure point, pressure bandage.”

 

She was back on that cargo vessel, a pit growing in the hollow of her stomach as Tiaj’s vitals slowly petered out into nothing, her breathing shallow and labored as her lungs filled with blood. The fluorescent scan of her hopelessly broken ribs betrayed the underlying issue, but there was no healing pod, no basic equipment, no knowledge to help, no _anything_ to even ease her pain when she passed—she was destined to help people as a paladin and she’d been useless; _unhelpful_ —

 

“Uh, Pidge?”

 

She opened and closed her fists, forcing herself to slow down her breathing before she looked up to the rest of the crew. They were on the beach in Belteguese, and Hunk wasn’t bleeding out, and she hadn’t been helpless: not this time.

 

Not ever again.

 

“S-sorry,” she stammered, squeezing her eyes shut to ward away the building panic.

 

“Are you okay, dude?” asked Keith, glancing down to regard the bloody knife in the sand. Hunk nodded, wincing as he attempted to wriggle his fingers.

 

“Everything’s still there, so I guess?” he chuckled good-naturedly, smiling at the green paladin. “And with Pidge’s quick thinking I’m all bandaged up now. Thanks, man.”

 

“What kind of Girl Scout badge did you earn when you learned how to do _that_?” asked Lance, voice squeaking slightly as he gestured to Hunk’s bandaged hand.

 

“ _Lance_ —“

 

“I mean it like a complement, Shiro! Pidge was like a freakin’ army medic ninja!”

 

“I’m not entirely sure what a ‘ninja’ is, but we will have to worry about it later,” Allura stated, assessing the scene with a quick nod of her head before she looked up to the green and yellow paladins. “You did a wonderful job, Pidge: I can see that your medical enrichment outside of training is paying off.”

 

“Wait, _medical enrichment_?”

 

Allura ignored Lance, sending Hunk a guilty look. “I apologize for cutting our little vacation short, but we really should get you to a healing pod, Hunk: we’ll want to avoid infection and minimize any potential nerve damage as much as possible.”

 

He hung his head, but he couldn’t disagree. “I think that would be best,” he replied, though he didn’t sound happy to say it. “Sorry to rain on the parade, everyone.”

 

“I’ll escort Hunk back to the Castle and get him started in the pod,” Coran piped up, shooing Pidge away to take her place in keeping Hunk’s bandaged hand elevated. She seemed reluctant to relinquish her patient, but complied nonetheless: Coran would get her friend what he needed.

 

“Thanks so much, Pidge,” said Hunk, sending her a warm smile before the Altean lead him away. “I probably would have gotten sick or something if I’d seen more blood, so thanks for patching me up and helping me preserve some of my dignity.”

 

She simply nodded, still somewhat dissociated. “I’ll pack up your stuff for you and bring it back to the castle.” A forced smile prodded at the corners of her lips. “I’ll see you when you get out of the pod, okay?”

 

“O-okay. And thanks.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

They’d all started to pack up after that, folding blankets and towels and collapsing the umbrella, and Pidge had made sure that all of the supplies had returned to Hunk’s sample bag. The pieces of lucinerite they’d found had all been labeled and stored, and a small sample of the delicious chips they’d had with their lunch was also tucked away for later analysis (Hunk had been curious about the seasoning).

 

When she went to go pick up Hunk’s knife (it went straight into a sample bag, destined for the autoclave), her knuckled brushed the half-carved piece of lucinerite embedded in the sand. She had half a thought to chuck it back into the ocean, linked as it was to Hunk’s all too recent suffering, but something about it beckoned her sentimentality.

 

Before she could change her mind, Pidge had pulled out another sample baggie and placed the piece inside, tucking the article inside of her pocket before she gathered the last of her things to head back to the castle.

 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N: Aaaaand we’re up to more than 2,000 hits and more than 50 comments! Thank you so, so much everyone: your continued support means the world to me, and really keeps me going to produce more content!**
> 
>  
> 
> **And in a stroke of coincidence, the chapter that takes place on Hunk’s birthday is published on my actual birthday! I’m 24 now! (oh goodness)**
> 
> **If you like the story, remember to leave a comment or a kudos! <3**


	22. Year 3 (part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge gets a case of the Feelings, and Big Brother Lance is there to help.

 

**YEAR III (part 3)**

 

\- - - - - - -

 

Hunk was midway through his quick session in the healing pod when the rest of the crew got back: according to Coran, the injury hadn’t been nearly as deep as initially feared, but they were keeping him in a tad longer just in case a mission came up and he didn’t have time to let the wound heal naturally.

 

It was at that point that the illusion of a vacation had vanished: nearly the entire party groaned as they’d padded to their rooms, but even as Pidge had showered, donned her pajamas, and crawled into bed, her synapses had refused to acknowledge the memo. Her head had been on the pillow for all of point four seconds before she’d muttered “fuck it all” and cast the sheets away, leaving her bed cold as she let her restless legs steer the course.

 

To her surprise, instinct didn’t take her to the infirmary, and instead lead her to a familiar elevator. She didn’t even laugh as the soft instrumental track played over the speaker system (she and Hunk had programmed it to play “All-Star by Smashmouth, but acoustic and played from another room” on loop about six months ago), instead pulling at the hangnail on her thumb as the gravity calibration whirred softly about the cabin.

 

She’d expected the surface of the Altean pool to be calm and placid upon entering the natatorium, but it glittered and danced under the artificial light, lapping gently at the edges as a lithe form propelled through the water below.

 

Lance touched the edge with both hands, taking in a deep breath as he prepared to push off of the wall and start his next lap, but instead he shrieked (just a little) when he caught sight of the green paladin.

 

“ _Madre dios_ , Pidge!” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he let out another breath. He looked up at her, cocking his head when she sent him a scowl.

 

“Sorry, you just startled me,” Lance explained, resting his chin on his hands as he leaned on the poolside. “What brings you down here at this varga? Couldn’t sleep?”

 

“My brain wasn’t ready to go to bed yet,” she mumbled, rubbing at the dark circles under her eyes. It wasn’t the entire truth, but she doubted that Lance wanted to hear about her anxieties in the middle of what seemed to be his evening workout.

 

“Hard to believe that that big, beautiful brain of yours ever rests,” laughed Lance, playfully flicking some water onto her pajama pants.

 

“It does, just never at a convenient time,” she grumbled, kicking out so the water droplets flicked back into Lance’s face before they could soak into the fabric.

 

“So what’s on your mind?”

 

Pidge bit her lip, shoving her hand into her pocket to grab her fidget.

 

“I can’t stop seeing Hunk cut his hand.”

 

Lance’s brows knit together.

 

“Pidge, you did an amazing job with that today: Hunk even said so, and with any luck he’ll be out of the cryo-pod as good as new by the time breakfast rolls arou—“

 

“I know he’s okay,” she continued, “and that I did things right; did them just as I’d practiced, with as little damage and pain as possible, which is why I can’t figure out why I can’t stop seeing it again and—“

 

Pidge groaned, pulling at the hair on her temples until her scalp burned.

 

“I just want to go to bed, sleep for more than two vargas in a row for a change, and not feel like I want to hurl myself out of the airlock in the morning, but this stupid anxiety and my stupid hands that _won’t stop fucking moving_ —“

 

She had to physically put effort into wrenching her hands away from the fidget, clenching them into tight fists as if she were keeping herself from scratching an itch, looking more and more miserable by the second as she slouched against the gleaming natatorium wall.

 

Lance seemed to understand, and pulled himself out of the water and grabbed his towel.

 

“You want me to burrito you?” he asked gently, holding the towel out as an offering, and when Pidge nodded he wasted no time in wrapping it around her body as tightly as he dared, his lanky arms locking the towel in place.

 

Several minutes passed, and little by little Pidge’s breathing slowed down to normal, her fingers no longer twitching in search of something to pick or tug.

 

“You’re dripping all over my shirt,” she finally mumbled, but didn’t motion to step back from Lance, who was now chuckling under his breath.

 

“There she is,” he murmured, giving her one more squeeze before releasing her little by little, letting her relinquish the towel in her own time even as he shivered on the deck. “Better?”

 

“Yeah, thanks.”

 

Lance slinked back into the water, resuming his previous position on the edge of the pool.

 

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

 

Pidge huffed, but relented, stooping down to roll the cuffs of her pajama pants up to her knees before she sat beside him, kicking her legs out to swirl the water around. She’d half expected him to start talking to fill the silence, but he seemed content to wait until she was ready.

 

And so she’d talked about her solo mission to find Matt, and the incident on the cargo ship with Tiaj, and how helpless and useless she’d felt as Tiaj had bled to death from an injury she hadn’t known how to treat or heal. How she’d finally found the memorial and, for a few horrifying moments, had thought that her brother was dead, and that even being a Voltron paladin hadn’t been enough to save him.

 

“When the Harpeyii—you know, those bird-Druid things—nearly wasted Hunk and me during the incident with the Qijitii, I finally put my foot down and decided to do something about it,” she explained. “So I asked Coran to help me learn some basic first aid, and that turned into meetings every few quintants on combat medicine and emergency care and, well…”

 

She trailed off, sighing deeply.

 

“If worse comes to worse—and chances are, we’ll get ourselves into some deep shit before this war is over—then I want to be able to make a difference. I want all of us to come home, you know?”

 

Ripples emanated from Lance’s body as he tread water not far from he pool’s edge, his blue and white swim trunks billowing with the current.

 

“Pidge, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that you already do make a huge difference,” said Lance, smiling softly. “I think it’s really neat that you’re expanding your skill sets and expertise to medical treatment, too: if anyone in this group could do it, it’s you.”

 

She offered a small smile, glancing away as she blushed at the praise.

 

“I also want you to know that it’s okay to struggle with the idea of having someone else’s wellbeing and health in your hands, you know?” he continued. “And, well, if it takes the edge off, I think that everyone on the team could benefit from some first-aid lessons as well: I’m not sure how much I remember from the Garrison, anyway…”

 

Lance ruffled the hair at the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly at the admission.

 

“Well the good thing is that the healing pods take care of most of the complicated work,” Pidge explained, “but I hesitate with relying on them too much, especially when we’re out in the field and don’t have immediate access to one. I’ve put most of my time into learning things like basic life support and scenario management, which are helpful when we can get to the healing pods shortly after the fact, but I’m afraid that the training is not as practical when we’re in the middle of a fight.”

 

“Yeah, no kidding,” Lance muttered, his mind immediately flashing to the debacle with Haxus and Sendak back when the castle-ship had been stationed on Arus. “But we’ve all gotta start somewhere, _claro_?”

 

Pidge smirked, nodding in assent. “ _Claro_. Speaking of which, by the way, why are you swimming laps at this varga? Aren’t you tired from carrying our resident emo around on your shoulders all day?”

 

Lance rolled his eyes, pushing back from the wall of the pool to tread water. “You wound me, Pidgey,” he drawled, hoisting his hands out of the water as his legs worked to keep him afloat as a way of example. “My endurance is the stuff of legends.”

 

Pidge saw through him immediately, though, and offered her own eye roll in return.

 

“Really, Lance: if you needed Coran to restock your Ritalin, you just had to ask.”

 

He flushed (and made a mental note to actually ask Coran about that, because he was down to his last two quintants of meds), and playfully splashed the hem of Pidge’s pajama bottoms a final time as he hoisted himself out of the pool.

 

“You know, I don’t just swim because of my ADHD,” Lance retorted playfully, making grabby hands for the towel that Pidge still clutched in her fingers the moment he’d completely emerged from the water. “It’s amazing exercise, and really helps to clear my head so that my mind isn’t racing when I go to bed.”

 

“Isn’t training enough for you, though?” Pidge asked, surrendering the towel as she leaned against the wall. “What Shiro and Allura put us through isn’t a walk in the park.”

 

Lance seemed to think about it for a moment—he clearly knew the answer in his heart, but putting it into words was proving to be difficult.

 

“Yeah, but, the swimming isn’t to be better for the team,” he explained, gesturing wildly with his hands, “Well, that’s not entirely true, but bear with me: the swim is like my skincare regimen: it’s for me. It’s my time to do my own thing; to keep myself balanced and in a regular routine. It helps me remember that, even though we do all sorts of weird and risky and completely unpredictable shit as paladins with most of our time that there’s always something familiar to come back to. And, well, I guess my routines help me to be a better version of myself, which means I can be a better person for the team, too.”

 

He rifled through the side pocket of his gym bag before pulling out a tube of chapstick and applying it liberally to his lips, glancing into the crystalline water to admire his work.

 

“And with a mask right before bed, I should be positively glowing in the morning,” he added, giving Pidge (and his reflection) a finger gun before placing the chapstick back in the bag.

 

Pidge rolled her eyes: even though she had a new perspective as to why Lance’s vanity was important to him, she still could have gone without the theatrics. But hey, to each their own.

 

And what he’d said about routines wasn’t entirely untrue: she had an ample collection of fidgets and habits (both good and bad, she wasn’t afraid to admit that), each of which lent her some semblance of comfort in a universe of unknowns, but when those comforts failed…

 

“Lance, are you in here every night?”

 

“I’ll be here tomorrow. Why?”

 

She smirked, remembering the green swimsuit currently drying in her private bathroom.

 

“I might join you.”

 

\- - - - - - -

 

The first two weeks of Pidge’s new routine were difficult, to say the least.

 

During the mornings Allura and Shiro would drill the other paladins for at least a varga before breakfast, and if they were especially unlucky they’d have to attend a diplomatic meeting or a mission debrief before finally getting the rest of the day to themselves (that is, unless they had a mission). Matt had since returned to aid in the Voltron Coalition Resistance Movement in the furthest edges of the territory they’d recently freed from the Galra Empire, working with the algorithm he, Pidge, and Hunk had developed to plan and implement coups in the furthermost edges of the Galra territories. His presence by her side in the lab was sorely missed, but when she could she’d set up the Altean equivalent of Skype and talk to him over the comms until one or both of them was summoned to do something.

 

And then, after all the day’s work, about every other day Lance would send her a look during dinner (where, to Hunk’s amazement, she’d eat about twice as much as she had before her workout regimen) and she’d reluctantly haul ass to the natatorium to swim laps with him, cursing her short arms while the taller, lankier man quite literally swam circles around her. Those nights she barely managed to brush her teeth before collapsing into bed for seven hours straight, pleasantly sore in the morning when she went about repeating the process all over again.

 

After about a fortnight she’d gotten the hang of it, and Lance began to swim alongside her rather than around her, and even as her muscles ached during morning training she marveled at how certain things—lifting weights, throwing punches, even holding her elbows up long enough so that she wouldn’t fuck up when she worked on large swaths of wiring to solder—became easier and easier.

 

About a month in, however, her shirts were getting too tight around the shoulders and back, and after she’d stolen one too many of Keith’s tank tops from the laundry pile the team had finally conceded to making an emergency trip to a swap moon so that she could get some new clothes.

 

“I still can’t believe that there’s a Space Costco,” muttered Lance as he held up a sleeveless shirt from the massive pile on the palette, giving a resigned sigh when he found that there were about four too many arm holes for his physiology.

 

“Don’t tell Slav,” Pidge muttered, grimacing as she came across a poorly discarded food sample in a bin of socks. “He’ll go on about universal constants until I actually find something in my size.”

 

“Yeah, well, it seems like certain things should be a _little_ more universally constant,” Lance retorted, waving the garment with too many arm holes on it in Pidge’s face, “such as the number of limbs on one’s upper body.”

 

She chuckled, punching something into the monitor at her wrist before aiming it at the sign above the palette.

 

“You’re looking in the sextapedal section,” she said as the sign translated into English on the monitor, showing the image to Lance. “You need to go to the bipedal tetrapod section over there, where those orange-looking things are.”

 

“The bipedal tetra- _what now_?”

 

“Guys, you’re missing out on all of the free samples!”

 

When Hunk finally got to them through the sea of people he looked like Christmas had come early, a sample cup laden with something that looked like glowing mashed potatoes in each hand.

 

“You’ve gotta try this stuff; it tastes like pumpkin pie. And this one, _wooh_ , this one tastes like those animal cracker things dipped in icing and sprinkles.”

 

Pidge raised an eyebrow, tilting her head as she surveyed the samples. Her hands were full (Coran had long since disappeared into the food goo section with the cart, and she needed a twelve-pack of socks in her size when she could find them, dammit!), but they looked and smelled safe enough to take a gander.

 

“Hit me up with that circus animal cookie,” she asked, opening her mouth with an obnoxious “AAAAAAH” until Hunk managed to feed her a spoonful.

 

Of course, Hunk hadn’t remembered to mention that the sample concoction was cold as _fuck_ , and the shock of it sent some of it dribbling embarrassingly down her chin.

 

“Oh man, sorry,” he fretted, brushing away the concoction from her chin with his thumb. “Forgot to mention that the cookie one was more like animal cracker ice cream—“

 

Lance could have _sworn_ that he’d seen the shell of Pidge’s ear flush pink as the yellow paladin had practically caressed her lower lip, swallowing loudly as he’d ducked down to wipe his hands on his pants. Hunk offered the both of them a sheepish smile as Pidge finally got around the temperature (both on her face and in her mouth) and was able to contemplate the taste on her tongue.

 

“That, right there,” she said, eyeing the half-empty sample cup in Hunk’s hand, “is Thrifty Circus Animal Cookie ice cream, with some contamination from Rocky Road still on the ice cream scoop as an aftertaste.”

 

“I _knew_ I’d detected something nutty,” Hunk muttered, scooping up some of the sample to test it again. “Yeah, you’re definitely right: that’s Rocky Road. Care for some, Lance?”

 

The blue paladin eyed the sample with adventurous interest: of the four of the younger paladins, he was typically the first to dive into trying something new, but the way Pidge’s face was scrunched up in a confused grimace was just too good to pass up.

 

Oh, he’d get back at her for all the times she’d less than subtly muttered ‘gay’ under her breath whenever she caught him admiring Keith’s ass in the flight suit.

 

“I’ll try the pumpkin pie one, sure,” Lance purred, making sure that Pidge was still within earshot as he sampled the goo. “The circus animal ice cream sounds good, but I’m not too keen on putting my mouth on something both your tongues have touched.”

 

Pidge’s face became even more contorted than it had been before (if that were possible), but Hunk only seemed to stare at the spoon for half a second before he sighed in resignation and continued to use it to finish off the rest of the sample.

 

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged, the plastic spoon still bobbing in his mouth as he caught sight of Keith in the book and magazine section and waved him down, remaining oblivious to the withering gaze Pidge sent Lance’s way.

 

“Nice try, but that spoon was clean before it went anywhere near my mouth,” she muttered under her breath, crossing her arms triumphantly when Lance pouted. “Hunk wouldn’t have offered it to me otherwise: he knows that that stuff skeeves me out.”

 

“ _Whatever_ , dude: you looked like you were about to swap spit with Hunk anyway when he touched your face just —“

 

“So, did you guys manage to find some stuff that fits?” Keith interjected awkwardly, Allura trailing not far behind him with an assortment of shampoos and lotions in her cart. Lance hopped up immediately to inspect the princess’s picks, pointedly ignoring Keith’s question as Hunk began recounting his adventure through the artisanal condiments section. Grateful for the distraction, Pidge put the socks she’d found into Allura’s cart and made for the bipedal tetrapod section, hoping that some retail therapy would cause both Lance (and herself) to forget all that had transpired in the last two minutes.

 

As she picked through the sizes and colors, she couldn’t help but dwell. Hunk was a reasonably attractive man, and she wasn’t used to being touched so gently on the face: she’d lost track of the number of times she’d been kicked or punched in the head in the last few years since becoming a member of Voltron, and even the time she’d let Lance apply a cleansing mask to her face hadn’t felt nearly as intimate as, well—

  
_That._

 

“Shittin’ _hell_ ,” she muttered, feeling her face grow hot again at the recent memory of the pad of his thumb grazing her lip, and then her mind betrayed her with an image of her surging forward with her hand tangled in his scalp and—

 

Nope. _Nope_. Nopenopenope _nope_. Dead puppies. Dead grandma. The smell of spoiled milk. Mayonnaise that’s been sitting out in the sun too long. Keith accidentally flashing her his pasty ass when she’d stumbled into the wrong shower a few months ago. And _no_ , dead grandma _again_ , because Lance’s ogling was somewhat warranted: Keith’s ass wasn’t half bad. Whatever. She’d dwell on Keith’s butt over _that_.

 

Just anything— _anything_ —but _that_.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

After another week of intense workouts (as well as pointedly ignoring a certain, recent revelation), Pidge finally came to the conclusion that she was sexually frustrated.

 

“Well what do you want _me_ to do about it?!” exclaimed Lance, waving his arms around frantically as the elevator creaked its way down to the pool area, the both of them carrying towels and a change of clothes. Pidge put her head in her hands, groaning loudly as his voice began to grate on her nerves.

 

“You don’t have to do anything, Lance!” she bit back tersely, still massaging her temples around her glasses. “I just— _ugh_ , I just needed to tell someone, okay? My body and my mind hate me right now and I know that Allura will just be all calm and tell me that it’s normal if I go to her, and I kinda need someone else to freak out with me right now?? ?”

 

It was then that Lance remembered something that Pidge had mentioned off-hand about a year ago, just after they’d finished with the Qijitii.

 

This wasn’t just a puberty-related snippet of drama and angst.

 

“Pidge, does this have to do with being ace?”

 

“Well, it _would_ have to do with being ace, except for the minor detail that I _don’t seem to be ace anymore_!” she hissed, digging her fingernails into her scalp. “Uuuuugh, why is human sexuality so quiznakking _confusing_?! I don’t have the time nor the desire to engage in activities to further the human race right now!”

 

Lance squinted as if he’d misheard her.

 

“Yeah, well sexuality isn’t just about a primal desire to make babies,” he pouted, glancing at the floor as he folded his arms. “If whatever that anthro professor at the Garrison is true then we’re a social species, and like to stick together. You can want to be close to someone without the intent—or even the capability—of reproducing with them.”

 

“I don’t need you to man-splain Gutierrez’s human sexuality and behavior lecture for me, Lance: I was right there next to you squirming in my seat when he pulled up the video explaining how bonobo orgies diffuse group tension.”

 

Lance couldn’t help but laugh at the memory, but he caught himself quickly as Pidge’s anger fizzled and withered away, leaving her perhaps more vulnerable than he’d seen her since he’d carried her to the healing pod after the Harpeyii attack.

 

“You’re right: I don’t need to explain anything, Pidge, because you and I have an understanding, right? We’re bi buds.”

 

“I’m biromantic, not bisexual.”

 

“Okay, then, in light of the situation, let’s take away labels for the moment,” said Lance, waving his hands as if to inefficiently clear a whiteboard. “Say you’re at the Space Mall, and this really cute girl comes up and asks you for directions to the restroom—“

 

“ _Lance_ —“

 

“Bear with me, I promise this is going somewhere—so this cute girl, you think she’s hot. You might be in the mood to want to get cozy with her, right?”

 

“’Might’ being the operative word, yes.”

 

“Well then what would change your mind? What would get you to like her more or less?”

 

“I don’t know; it depends on the girl.”

 

“The girl, yes, but the situation, Pidge, the _situation_! It also depends on the kind of day you’re having, whether you’re in another relationship already, how many of her friends she’s got with her…the point is that, as the variables add up, it doesn’t become about you anymore. Heck, it’s not even about them anymore, either!”

 

“Lance, I know you’re a pinnacle of bisexual wisdom, but I’m still not getting your point.”

 

“The point is that, no matter what kind of day you’re having; no matter what situation you’re in, you’re still the same person, right? Thinking a chick is hot one day and then looking at her the next and being like ‘nah’ the next didn’t mean that you somehow became a different person overnight. Now, when we put the labels back on—we’ll call this hypothetical person ‘bisexual,’ because this happens to me like once a week if I’m going to be honest—did being into a girl for a day mean I was straight on that day and then bi again the next?”

 

Pidge’s face gave that annoyed scrunch again, but she couldn’t fault Lance’s logic. “No, you’re still bi as hell either way.”

 

“And if I married that girl and spent the rest of my life with her and never looked at anyone else ever again—“

 

“Yes, Lance, you’d still be bi as hell.”

 

“And I’d still be the same Lance that made out with Bobby Freller in the locker room after gym practice in middle school and liked it.”

 

“And the same Lance that _very convincingly_ pretended to be married to Keith for the better part of three days,” she sniggered, cackling as Lance spluttered in indignation. “And also, _eew_ , I didn’t need to know that you and Freller tainted the Garrison locker room.”

 

She sighed, momentarily separating herself from languishing in Lance’s embarrassment. “I get what you’re saying, though, about the bisexuality thing. It’s just that—well it’s, it’s not the same as being ace. Or—“ she gave a vague gesture to the air—“ _whatever_ I am now. I went from experiencing no sexual attraction at all to getting slapped in the face with it, and it’s cramping my style and proving to be very distracting to both my work and my interpersonal relationships.”

 

“Okay, so the quantity of sexuality is different than quantity, I’ll give you that,” Lance conceded, rubbing his chin with his thumb. “So maybe you’re not ace, then, or at least not all the time. Like I said earlier, you’re still Pidge regardless of who you’re attracted to or whether you’re attracted to someone or not, but if giving your sexuality a label helps you to figure things out in your personal life then that’s totally valid. If it’s not helping, though, then it’s probably hurting.”

 

“And how exactly would designating my sexual identity help me?”

 

“Well for one thing it might get you to stop beating yourself up over thinking or feeling a certain way,” Lance grinned, elbowing her lightly in the side. “I knew that things began to make a lot more sense after I owned up to being bi. Like, being ‘bi’ is a lot less complicated than being a straight guy that also likes other guys.”

 

“Lance, that makes no sense.”

 

“Yeah, well it didn’t make much sense to 11 year-old me, either: imagine my relief when I found out that I could like both, and that boys weren’t just exceptions to the rule.”

 

“Exceptions?”

 

“Yeah, before I knew about bisexuality I was a straight guy with exceptions.”

 

Pidge laughed, but the idea got her thinking.

 

“Well, then, I guess I’m a biromantic asexual with exceptions until further notice.”

 

Lance smiled, giving her a quick side-hug. “Does that make you feel any better?”

 

The green paladin thought about it: her mom had always said that human categories were social rather than biological constructs, after all. Besides, what was there to fear about sexuality? She was in goddamned outer space, and cosmopolitan alien society tended to be a lot more receptive to differences in sexuality than a lot of the bigots back on Earth.

 

Maybe she didn’t have to know what she was just yet: or maybe, with time and experience, she would come to know such things empirically.

 

“For now.”

 

**_\- - - - - - -_ **

 

Little did she know that the opportunity to do so would arrive so soon.

 

“Hey, do you want to go clubbing on your birthday?”

 

Pidge nearly choked on the straw stuck in her juice pouch, coughing to get the liquid out of her windpipe as Keith awkwardly patted her back.

 

The four youngest paladins were lounging on the coldest part of the training deck with their refreshments during their break as Shiro, Coran, and Allura discussed the details of a non-vital transmission that had come in from the higher-ups at the Voltron Coalition earlier that morning. From behind the shatter-proof glass their voices were completely imperceptible, eyes focused intently on an image of some alien diplomat being projected from Allura’s wrist.

 

“Do I want to go… _clubbing_.”

 

“Yeah, dude, it’s your 18th!” exclaimed Lance, tapping her shoulder with his fist. “We should do something special!”

 

“Any chance you’ve run this by Shiro or Allura before sharing with the class, McClain?”

 

He grimaced, but quickly disregarded the comment by blowing a raspberry. “What can space mom and space dad do about it? We don’t have to do what they say once we’re all adults—which you finally will be, by the way, in case you were forgetting.”

 

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, _in case you were forgetting_ , neither of them are our legal guardians, and even if they were I’m sure there’s some sort of intergalactic law that trumps anything the US government could hope to enforce given that we’re, I don’t know, approximately four million light-years from Earth right now?”

 

Hunk and Keith snorted behind their hands at the look of petulance Lance sent her way as he crossed his arms. “Well excuse me for asking if you wanted to do something special on your birthday!”

 

“Cool your jets, man: I never said that I didn’t want to go. I was simply being pragmatic. Besides, aren’t clubs supposed to be dark, crowded places that smell like stale weed? Doesn’t sound like a howling good time to me.”

 

“Pidge, Pidge, _Pidge_ ,” Lance touted, smiling calmly as if he were disciplining a child. “Those are _Earth_ clubs. Positively _plebian_. We’d be going to classy, fancy-ass space nightclubs with smoke and scent policies and occupancy caps.”

 

“And where do you suppose you’re going to find the tickets to get into one of these fancy places?” Keith snarked, a playful smile tugging at the corner of his lip. “Last time I checked you weren’t a member of alien high society.”

 

“Oh, Keith, that’s where you’re wrong,” Lance purred, pulling his orange Altean communication device out of his gym bag and scrolling through the contacts.

 

“You remember that hot prince guy that we met a few months ago on Tatz?” he asked, his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth as he flicked past dozens of people.

 

“The one who challenged you to a naked oil wrestling match to ask for your hand in marriage?”

 

“No, Hunk, that was his brother. I’m talking about Yarrzavahal. The hot one.”

 

“Yeah, what of him?”

 

“He co-owns a nightclub a few star-systems over. Said it was called Oryon or something? Super fancy, by invitation only: the whole works. Said that after we helped repair the subway transport system in their city that he owed us a favor.”

 

“You mean the subway transport system that Hunk and I repaired while you were fraternizing with the prince and Keith was off on some Blade mission,” muttered Pidge, scoffing lightly as Lance pointedly ignored her comment. “But yeah, feel free to cash in our hard-earned favors.”

 

“So feisty today, Pidgey!” Lance laughed somewhat nervously as he appraised her expression. “No need to worry: I’ll have him make you a birthday fishbowl when we get there.”

 

“A _fishbowl_? For _what fish_?”

 

“The kind that finds you with a mean hangover on a stranger’s couch the next morning,” Keith grumbled, dragging a palm along the side of his face. Hunk side-eyed him, pushing his pointer fingers together in apprehension.

 

“We’re, uh, not gonna get into anything illegal while we’re there, I’m assuming,” he chuckled, sending Lance a warning look. “Or anything else that is otherwise legal yet potentially harmful.”

 

“Wouldn’t _dream_ of it, big guy, wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, we’re literally _the_ Defenders of the Universe: it takes more than a coupla pokes to knock us down, right?”

 

“We could be virtually invincible and Shiro and Allura still wouldn’t let us go, though,” Keith groused, picking at the hem of his gloves. “Allura’s gonna go on about how going to a nightclub and partying is bad for the Coalition’s reputation, and Shiro’s gonna parrot everything she says because he’s thinking with his pants instead of his brain.”

 

“Well can you blame him?”

 

“Oh my _god_ , Lance—“

 

“Save your lovers’ quarrel for later, gentlemen,” Pidge interrupted, extending both of her hands outward until they hovered in front of each of the boys’ mouths. “If I was able to track my brother down with a shit lead when he was quiznak knows where in the known universe, we can figure out a way to go clubbing without the space parents crashing the party.”

 

“Here’s how it’s gonna go: we’ll drop in after the boring-ass adults go to bed while we’re on this next mission, then take one of the Lions and go have fun at Oryon or whatever the hell it’s called for a few vargas, and sneak back into the castle before everyone wakes up.”

 

“But what about—“

 

“We’ll figure out the logistic later, Hunk,” she interrupted, flicking her gaze to the door of the training deck as it slid open and Shiro and Coran came back inside.

 

“The princess is just finishing up, but she gave us the go-ahead to get started on partner drills!” Coran chirped, far too chipper for how early in the day it was. “Today we’ll be working on takedowns!”

 

The younger paladins groaned in unison as Coran summoned a training bot for a demonstration, giving each other sidelong glances as the orange-haired Altean launched into an overly complicated discussion on applied combat physics when battling opponents with tails. Lance and Pidge managed to make a furry joke each while asking questions before Shiro finally caught on and told them to can it, but their muffled snickering was enough to keep them in good spirits until they had finally been deemed deserving of their lunch break.

 

If all went well today then they’d have the rest of the afternoon to plan their upcoming visit to Oryon, and she’d still have time to work in the lab after dinner and snag some of that ice cream dessert from the galley on the way to bed.

 

She’d eat it at dinner but, well, she was still struggling with making eye contact with the chef while she ate.

 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooooh, someone might have a cruuuuush~
> 
> Also, the bit where Lance and Pidge talk about sexuality isn't meant to encompass every bi person's experience with bisexuality and/or biromance. I'm not an expert in sexuality, nor am I the best person to approach about bi stuff, but I'm aceflux as hell so the frustration Pidge experiences there is definitely an artifact of my own experience .___. we'll continue to delve into this topic later, but for now this is what y'all are gonna get ;) 
> 
> so what kind of trouble are these dumbasses going to get into at the club? stay tuned, folks, and thanks so much for reading!


	23. Year 3 (part 4)

** Year III (part 4) **

****

** WARNINGS: Lots of insecurity/inner dialogue related to negative body image, and a panic attack. **

****

Pidge blinked blearily as she stared in her reflection in the mirror, rubbing at the underside of her eye with one fist as she guided a toothbrush to the faucet with the other. She’d forgotten to wash her face after her pool session with Lance last night, and whatever the Alteans used to keep the pool water fresh tended to make her skin break out. 

Today, of course, was no exception: a new blackhead was beginning to emerge between her left nostril and cheek, and she didn’t have time to get a hot washcloth and sit there with the damn thing on her face for half an hour like Lance suggested because breakfast was less than a quarter varga away and she still needed to put on her flight suit and armor for training shortly thereafter. What’s more, a few of the creatures that had followed her back to the castle after being stranded in the garbage nebula (Hunk, the Trekkie that he was, had called them ‘trash tribbles’ and the name had stuck) had completely taken over her bathroom overnight, and she needed to clear them out and back into her room before they unraveled and ate all of the toilet paper again. 

Despite her need for haste, Pidge couldn’t help but give herself a second glance when she spit out her toothpaste, her eyes trailing along the freckled curves of her shoulders and biceps as she got up from the sink.

She was in a sports bra and, even though she realized that the contours of the garment were cut to frame the arms, the person staring back at her in the mirror was unmistakably more robust than she’d previously thought. Pidge never was—and never would be—a body builder, but the thick bundles of corded muscle that subtly bulged as she flexed were evidence enough to realize that this buffer, better-postured person in the mirror was far more equipped to handle the physical demands of their Voltron responsibilities than the restless, anxious Pidge that had wandered into the natatorium and confided in Lance almost three months ago.

Pidge had never cared much about her appearance, but she found herself smiling nonetheless as she pulled her hair up into a quick ponytail, shimmied into her flight suit for training, and set a course for the mess hall.

Lance, Hunk, and Keith were already there, seated at their designated spots at the table as they waved at her in greeting. Shiro, Coran, and Allura were conspicuously absent, and as Pidge checked her phone the seventh varga of the day blinked onto the screen, along with a ridiculously punctual request for a video call from Allura.

Pidge jumped just a little in her seat before she accepted, configuring the device to put their conversation on speaker so that everyone else could hear. 

Immediately, Allura’s overly chipper voice sounded from the speakers, echoing with much more energy and warmth than strictly deemed acceptable for this hour. There was no video feed to accompany her voice, but even so Pidge could practically see the diplomatic smile curving the princess’s lips as she greeted them.

“Good morning, paladins!” she chirped. “We’re all terribly sorry for our lack of punctuality: our early morning debrief took much more time than anticipated.”

Lance sent a look to the other paladins at the table, but kept his lips sealed shut as Pidge sent him a look. 

“No worries, ‘Llura: you guys still gonna be down here for breakfast?”

“At approximately seven and a quarter vargas, Number Five!” came Coran’s somewhat muffled voice in the background, equally as chipper as his charge. Pidge was convinced that the Alteans needed about half as much sleep as humans to function properly on any given day: a trait she none too silently envied when she’d fallen asleep at her work station two quintants in a row during their last mission. 

“You all should go ahead and get started on your morning meal in the meantime,” Allura suggested. “There’s also some fruit from the Bolemmi in the galley if you’d prefer that over your standard fare.”

Pidge thanked her and thumbed the ‘END CALL’ button, massaging her temples as she let out a tired groan. 

“Those extra sixteen minutes and twelve seconds of sleep were robbed from me,” she grumbled, staring at the phone on the table as if it had offended her. 

“What do you think they’re talking about, anyway?” said Keith, his brows pinched inward as he too stared at Pidge’s device. “That’s at least the third quintant in a row that they’ve had an early morning meeting.”

“Boring adult stuff, probably,” said Lance, waving the suspicion off with a flick of his hand and a roll of his eyes. “You know, health insurance, the mortgage, covert peace negotiations with furries and toad people—“

“I don’t know, they’ve been awfully secretive about it,” said Hunk, shifting in his seat as his eyes flitted back and forth. “I think that, whatever they’re up to, they definitely don’t want us knowing about it. Coran schedules meetings down to the tick, so when they go over that usually means that something unscheduled happened.”

Pidge nodded, narrowing her eyes. “Something out of his control, probably. Something like—“

A light brightened behind her eyes, and all at once Pidge had grabbed her phone and started to scan the castle for incoming signals. 

“What are you doing?” asked Keith, none too subtly leaning over from his seat to attempt to catch what was transpiring on the green paladin’s screen. 

“Looking for an unplanned delay,” she muttered, tongue poking out from between her teeth as the other paladins looked upon her with incredulity.

She continued to click away, checking all of the normal and covert frequencies they typically used after she’d slipped through the castle’s firewall. She even delved into the channels that, according to Coran, had been abandoned decapheebs ago, but the castle was giving no indication of receiving or giving off any signals that were different from the normal broadcasts.

With a groan she disconnected and threw the phone back onto the table, letting it slide across the polished surface until it teetered over the edge between Coran and Allura’s empty seats, landing with a solid slap on the cold tile floor below.

“Whatever they’re doing, they’ve either disconnected from their outside contact or never had one in the first place and are doing something else.”

“So they could pretty much be doing anything?” said Keith.

“That’s the gist of it.”

“So why don’t we just ask?” said Lance, shrugging his shoulders. “Depending on how elaborate their lie is we can figure out how big of a deal this thing they’re trying to hide is.”

“But what if they catch on that we’re suspicious and become even more secretive about the whole thing?” asked Hunk, sending his friend an apologetic glance for poking holes in his idea. “If we pretend not to care, they might even let something slip while they’re around us and we might be closer to figuring out if they’re hiding something.”

“And if they don’t think that we suspect anything, we can more readily plan our little visit to Oryon,” Pidge added almost off-handedly, smirking at the rest of the present paladins. “Lance, I believe we’ll be requiring your expertise for that.”

Lance immediately brightened at the prospect, rubbing his hands together as the cogs in his head began turning.

“Well, first thing’s first,” he chirped, stooping under the table to grab Pidge’s phone and slide it back to her. “Everyone grab some breakfast and pretend to be too tired to suspect anything!”

The green paladin didn’t need to be told twice, and had barely planted the side of her head atop her folded arms before she’d drifted off into a brief nap.

\- - - - - - -

Coran stared gravely at the holo-screen before them, worry creasing his brow as the photographs scrolled past. Next to him Shiro was gazing just as intently, looking down only occasionally to take notes as needed. 

“The most recent information that the Blade has gathered demonstrates that we need to act quickly,” said Allura, her voice stern. 

“We’re going to need to move up our time table, then,” Shiro muttered. “We have to figure out what this weasel knows before we have a complete and utter disaster on our hands.” 

His eyes caught Allura’s, gaze unwavering as he searched her visage. 

“Are we still steadfast in our decision to not include the other paladins?” 

Biting her lip, Allura looked away.

“No, but I feel like we don’t have much of a choice at this point,” she murmured. “After the Qijitii incident and what it did to them—“

Coran silently nodded: Lance had come to him for pheebs thereafter, sometimes in the middle of the sleep cycle, plagued by images of Keith’s desperate terror and the unspeakable experiments hidden deep within the bowels of the Qijitii palace. The blue paladin had handled it—albeit with difficulty—but if Coran could spare Lance and the others from this then he’d gladly suffer their future ire for keeping them in the dark.

“Then our decision stands,” said Coran resolutely, rising from the table. “Though, due to our modified time tables, we will require a valid excuse to retire early in three quintant’s time.”

They remained in silence for a few moments when, out of nowhere, Shiro’s communication device buzzed with a notification. Glancing at the Alteans for permission, he peered over the table to read his screen:

_ Pidge’s Birthday _

_ >Wednesday _

Shiro allowed himself to smirk.

“Make that two quintants: I think I have an idea.”

\- - - - - - -

“A surprise party?”

“Shh, Hunk, not so loud!” Allura admonished, motioning for the yellow paladin to lower his voice as she whipped her head around, checking to see if anyone else had heard. When the hall proved otherwise vacant, she cupped her hand, continuing their conversation in a whisper.

“Pidge’s birthday is in two quintants, and according to Shiro this is the decapheeb she comes of age. As such, we must welcome her into adulthood with a celebration.”

Hunk nodded, concurring: Pidge had spent most of her teenage years in space, and they’d admittedly copped out on her sweet 16 two years back (then again, it was hard to do anything when she’d explicitly warned them not to do anything special or else she’d have the entire castle rigged to play a transcript of ‘Bee Movie’ read by her computer’s text-to-speech program on repeat for an entire quintant as punishment), so this was there chance to make up for lost opportunities.

“What do you need me to do?”

Allura smiled. “We were wondering if you’d like to be in charge of the cake. If you’re busy or want to contribute in a different way we can always pick one up at the swap moon, but—“

“Yeah, sure, I’ll make the cake!” Hunk exclaimed, though a part of him was eternally grateful for Allura not necessarily assuming that he’d be thrilled to do it and giving him an out if he didn’t feel like baking. “When should I have it ready?”

“Mid-quintant should be perfect: if possible, Coran, Shiro, and I would like to retire early that quintant, as we will have spent most of the morning setting things up and have much to do the morning after.”

Hunk mentally filed away this information for later as he nodded contemplatively: the other paladins (excluding Pidge, of course) would be thrilled to know of a possible window for their covert clubbing expedition. 

“That sounds good: it looks like you guys have already done a lot of the planning, given how long your meetings have gone for. This party’s gotta be quite the shindig!”

Allura had no idea what a ‘shindig’ was (frankly, it sounded quite painful), but she smiled and nodded nevertheless, hoping her smile would cover up her confusion. 

“I’m, uh, gonna need to pick up some supplies at an intergalactic market soon, though: I ran out of piping bags when we had Shiro’s party a few weeks ago…”

“Then I’ll tell Coran to schedule us for shore leave at the nearest swap moon,” she replied. “I’ll keep everyone else occupied while you shop for necessities.”

“How are you gonna do that?”

\- - - - - - -

“Absolutely _not_.”

Pidge stuffed her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie (one of her recent spoils from Space Costco) and glared at Allura, her mouth pulled into an impressive pout. 

“Pidge, you’ve outgrown your formalwear and need to have something appropriate for galas and balls,” she attempted to reason, offering the girl a sympathetic smile. “I promise we’ll be quick and efficient, and with Keith and Lance here to help us with a third and fourth opinion we’ll be done in no time!”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” she muttered none too quietly, sending the red and blue paladins a look of mild disdain. “This is gonna be like a goddamned episode of ‘Say Yes to the Dress.’ I’d rather go shopping for multicolored potatoes and engine parts with Hunk.”

She looked at him as if his opinion factored into Allura’s decision, a silent plea in her eyes, but as bad as he felt for her, they all had jobs to do.

“And I’d love to have you with me, Pidge, but Allura really needs you for this,” he said kindly. He couldn’t help but feel as if he were talking to a child (and with Pidge that _definitely_ rubbed him the wrong way), but if anything Lance blabbered on about his face and voice being an ‘unstoppable force and an immovable object colliding together to make a human version of the sun’ was even remotely true, she’d relent.

“Ugh, _fine_ ,” she conceded, scoffing as she glared at Allura. “You have one varga. _One_. No more, and less if possible.”

Allura glanced up at Hunk, giving him a meaningful look. “I think we can all work with that,” she said, still the picture of compromise and cordiality. “We will meet back here in a varga then.”

And so they went off their separate ways, Lance immediately saddling up to Allura to discuss color palettes that would work well with Pidge’s complexion. Keith ambled up to her a fair distance behind them, pulling a Twinkie out of his pocket (they’d stopped by the earth store just a moment ago) and folding back the wrapper before offering her the first bite. 

“To numb the pain,” he muttered dryly, waving the treat in front of her nose. She obliged, taking a generous bite before shoving that half-eaten snack back into his hands. 

“How did _you_ get dragged into this?” she drawled, sending Keith a quizzical look. 

“Well, it was either this or helping Coran polish all 1,246 scaultrite lenses in the hyperdrive chamber,” he muttered, finishing the Twinkie in a bite before crumbling up the wrapper and stuffing it into the pack on his belt (the rubbish bin was _literally_ 5 feet away).

“I still’d rather do that over this nonsense,” she quipped, rolling her eyes as Lance and Allura commented animatedly on the ornate window displays in the department stores. Shopping for clothes had never been a particularly positive experience for her: her skin was extremely sensitive, and she hated wearing anything that she hadn’t sent to Lance or Coran to have the tags meticulously removed first. Tags notwithstanding, very few materials felt right on her skin, and chances were that when something was aesthetically pleasing it was itchy as all hell, and when something was comfortable it ended up making her look like a pug in a Halloween costume (and definitely not in a cute way). 

“Well, since I’m being forced to be here too I’ll try to keep Allura and Lance on a time table,” he muttered, sending her a small smile. 

She laughed. “You’ll tell me if something doesn’t look good on me, right?”

“Why would I lie about that?”

A sigh. “You’ll see in a few minutes.”

\- - - - - - -

By the fourth try-on Pidge was _done_.

And, unfortunately, not in the way she wanted to be: there were still more than a dozen garments waiting on hangers in the small changing room, and it seemed like every few minutes either Lance or Allura would come by to heap more on the hook outside the door. On the other side of the door Keith was doing his best to put items back on hangers when they inevitably didn’t fit and/or looked terrible on her, his silent sympathy just about the only thing keeping her from storming out of the place altogether. 

“There’s literally _thousands_ of advanced alien civilizations that are served by this swap moon, and not a _single one_ has invented the tech to bypass having to try on clothes?” she seethed, tearing the blouse off of her head before chucking it over the divider. “There are so many potential avenues to do it: personalized androids, computer simulations…”

“If you weren’t busy using your brain to save the universe you’d probably invent it yourself,” Keith chuckled, earning a scoff. 

“Or we could all forsake capitalism and just walk around naked.”

He snorted, moving out of the way as Pidge opened the dressing room door and stepped into the mirrored hallway, inspecting the pair of fitted slacks she’d just tried on. 

“Too tight around you thighs,” Keith said off-handedly, and Pidge groaned and stomped back to the dressing room. “You may as well be naked if you walked around in those.”

Pidge muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘speak for yourself’ before a rustling indicated that she was trying on another pair of pants, swearing loudly when she tripped over one of the legs and slammed into the dressing room wall. 

“What was that, Pidge?” he asked slyly.

“Eat a dick, Kogane.”

“Pidge, _language_!” drawled Lance, practically prancing through the dressing room as he carried one more item for Pidge’s queue to the hook outside her door. 

“Eat a dick, McClain.”

Lance’s face pinched in indignation as Keith sniggered, but the moment quickly ended when Pidge emerged again, this time wearing a pair of dress pants.

“Hey, those could work—“ 

“Nope, too baggy.”

“ _Keith_.” 

He raised his eyebrows as he stared at Lance head-on, blinking a few times as the blue paladin withered.

“They hang way too low on her hips and are baggy around her groin. The inseam is too low for her torso. It’s not flattering at all.”

Lance squinted at him. Keith—edgy, devil-may-care Keith, who wore a cropped jacket and a fanny pack—was talking about _fashion_? And in a way that suggested he _knew_ something about it?

(I mean, he was right, but Lance wasn’t about to admit that.)

Even so, he stared at Keith as if he’d just rattled off a conversation in an alien language, and even Pidge looked mildly surprised at the input: at this point he’d either just given a thumbs up or a thumbs down wheh he’d seen something on her, and not provided any real technical reasoning for his decisions at all. 

“Well, am I wrong?”

Pidge took another moment to process the information, mentally filing it away for later before she went behind the door and shucked the pants off to try on another pair.

As she shuffled around, Lance sent Keith a questioning look. The red paladin rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“I took home ec in middle school and binge-watched every season of _Project Runway_ when I was out in the desert,” he said by way of explanation, “ _and_ ,”—just as Lance opened his mouth—“it doesn’t do Pidge any good if we say something looks good on her and it actually doesn’t.” 

“Preach,” came the green paladin’s voice from behind the door, slightly muffled as she pulled something over her head. “If I end up with something that looks shitty we’re just gonna have to come back and waste more time anyway, so get your head out of your ass and give me an honest opinion.”

Lance scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Quite the potty mouth today, aren’t we?”

“I’m doing something I don’t particularly enjoy, and Shiro isn’t around to look disappointed. Sue me.”

“And that should be the last of it!”

Allura strolled in, three garments in tow and looking particularly smug. Pidge groaned: she could already see from the space under the dressing room that all three were floor-length dresses.

“Ooh, these are cute!” Lance exclaimed, running his fingers over the shimmering fabrics. Pidge groaned again, this time loud enough to draw their attention, but Allura simply took her disgruntlement in stride.

“Come now, Pidge, at least give them a try?” she urged, clutching the hangers to her chest. 

“No.”

“Can I try them on for you?”

The dressing room door clicked open again, and this time Pidge was sporting a pair of pea-green trousers that ran a few inches past her ankles, but otherwise fit quite well. She gave Allura a quizzical look, wondering how the hell Allura’s size and shape corresponded to hers in any way—

Oh.

“Wait, you can—?”

“Shifting my body to your external physiology and pigmentation shouldn’t be too difficult,” Allura mused, setting the dresses in an adjacent dressing room. “Would you like me to help try on clothes? If it looks good on me, then you can try it on for yourself and see how it feels. If it doesn’t look good, you don’t have to try it on at all. It should narrow down the number of items you have to try.” 

“Hell fucking _yeah_ ,” said Pidge, not even needing a second to think over the decision. 

Pidge had barely finished her sentence before Allura had begun to change: her hair seemed to retract back into her scalp, auburn blooming from the roots as her tight curls softened into waves. Her skin flashed from brown to blue to green before it finally settled on Pidge’s light, heavily freckled complexion, at which point her entire body began to shrink and her weight began to shift to the appropriate places. Finally, Allura’s pointed ears somewhat rounded out, and her cheek marks all but disappeared underneath her skin, and within moments Pidge was staring at a not-quite mirror reflection of herself.

It was far more unsettling than she thought it would be, but she didn’t dare mention it: Allura was doing her a favor, and it wasn’t her intention to cause discomfort at all. Pidge swallowed, clearing her throat as she turned to Keith, pretending she’d just seen something totally mundane and normal and not someone tall, dark, and beautiful turning into, well, _her_. 

Or perhaps it was more appropriate to say that Allura had turned into some _version_ of herself that carried themselves tall and proud, back ramrod straight and well-manicured hands poised at her sides, with smooth and unmarred skin that barely glared against the room’s artificial light. 

As soon as the transformation had run its course Allura plucked the dress at the top of the pile and held it against her chest, moving the skirt this way and that as she admired the way it looked against her skin in the mirror.

“Yes, I think I shall quite like this,” Allura muttered, sending Pidge a quick wink before she disappeared behind the door.

Judging by his expression, Keith was also somewhat startled by Allura’s magic trick, but in true awkward Keith fashion he simply pretended that it hadn’t happened and immediately jumped to the next thing.

“The pants fit well, but they’ll need hemming at the bottom,” he commended, toeing the extra fabric with his boot. “They’re not super-formal, but they’ll be a good addition to your business-casual wardrobe for sure.”

“What the hell are we going to need biz-cash for in space?” scoffed Lance, throwing his hands up in indignation.

“I dunno, but they’ll get more use than that box of condoms you got at Space Costco last month,” Pidge muttered, smirking when Keith had to hold back a guffaw of laughter. Lance made a series of unintelligible noises before he gave up on a comeback and plopped himself in a waiting room chair, arms folded and face a brilliant shade of puce. 

“Just—try on your damn clothes, Pidgeon,” he pouted, waving toward the small mountain of clothes she’d had yet to go through.

So she continued to work through the pants, skirts, and the occasional dress or two, and Keith continued to fold the discarded items as one article after the other reused to meet expectations. Allura and Lance, however, seemed to be striking gold on every other garment: in the long run it kept her from having to try on a number of things, but a part of her wilted every time something looked good on ‘Pidge’ but fell flat (sometimes quite literally) on her own body. For some reason, Allura just had a way of filling whatever she touched with her presence and magic, but _Pidge_ —

Every time she looked in the mirror, she felt stubbier, shorter, more awkward, more unkempt: everything she hated about body seemed to magnify ten-fold as the fallacy of it all flashed before her vision; this, this post-puberty beauty she could have been, her not-legs a mile long in short skirts and her not-hair curling flatteringly against her shoulders as she flipped it to the side to adjust her earrings. 

And it wasn’t just that Allura _looked_ like a more attractive version of Pidge: she _acted_ like one too, moving gracefully about with practiced ease as she twirled in the skirts, her body rolling languidly as she stretched to check the fit of the floral print dress she’d just slipped on. She was confident, commanding the space and her body within it, and here Pidge was, stumbling whenever she didn’t have both feet firmly planted on the ground. 

A pit of insecurity had settled deep in her stomach, flaring red in envy whenever someone else happened to walk into the dressing room and complement the _other_ Pidge. No one ever commented when the _real_ Pidge shuffled out of her stall, scanning herself in thinly-veiled dissatisfaction before inevitably stalking back to the changing room to repeat the process all over again.

And she thought she could keep it in until they got back to the castle; until she could put on her swimsuit and do laps until she was too tired to care about the way she looked—in fact, the dress she had on now didn’t look half-bad, and she was looking forward to Keith’s feedback on it once she’s wrestled enough with the zipper in the back.

She thought she could ignore her insecurities until Hunk’s familiar voice declared that he’d finished early and come to help her choose something.

She thought that she wouldn’t care what he thought of the dress on her as she stared through a crack in the changing room door and tried to gather her nerves to come out, but when Allura emerged from her stall wearing the exact same dress and, by her reckoning, looking far better in it than ‘real’ Pidge did—

She saw from her stall as Hunk’s mouth had dropped open, transfixed as not-Pidge twirled the skirt in the mirror, not even realizing that it _wasn’t her_ , and her resolve shattered.

Pidge curled up on the bench, the pounding in her head blocking her senses as she drew her knees into her chest and, silently as she could muster, began to weep. 

\- - - - - - -

“Hunkules, you finished early!”

Lance’s address pulled Hunk out of his stupor, and was mortified to realize that he’d been staring at Pidge, who smirked cheekily when his gaze finally turned away.

“Yeah, knowing where to find everything this time helped, but—hold on—“

He gave her a second look, taking in her features: she seemed softer; more feminine, but beyond that, this wasn’t—this wasn’t _Pidge_.

For as long as he’d known her, Pidge’s fingernails had never been this long and manicured, free of the creases and healed cuts and burns she’d accumulated from working with her hands. There was no whitened scar running parallel with her right eyebrow, and her posture was far too upright to belong to someone that spent more than half the waking hours of the day hunched over a laptop.

_ This wasn’t Pidge.  _

The sounds around him drowned out as Hunk dropped his groceries and fumbled at his side for his bayard, blood pounding in his ears as dread pooled in the pit of his stomach.

The familiar cannon materialized in his grip, and Hunk could vaguely make out Keith and Lance yelling at him frantically somewhere off to the side, but none of that mattered: this wasn’t Pidge, _this wasn’t Pidge,_ how could they have _not noticed_ —

“ _Where is Pidge_.”

It wasn’t a question: it was a _demand_ , and if Hunk had half an iota of sympathy for this, this _impostor_ , he’d be disgusted at the lack of humanity in his voice, but for all he knew Pidge could be _anywhere_ —

But then Lance was throwing himself in front of her, arms outstretched in the universal gesture of surrender, and his mouth was moving, and the white noise around them was beginning to fade—

“—nk! Hunk! Stand down, stand down! Hunk, it’s Allura, she’s helping Pidge try on clothes! Pidge is in the dressing room behind you; she’s okay; she’s not in danger!”

It took a tick or two for him to process Lance’s words, but it wasn’t until not-Pidge’s skin began to fade to brown and a pair of familiar glowing marks began to materialize on her cheeks that he finally willed his transformed bayard away, the stress of it all hitting him like a truck as he leaned onto the closest wall for support. Lance stared at him, terrified at what he’d just witnessed and done, and when Hunk’s eyes landed on him he couldn’t help but flinch at the coldness; the _lifelessness_ he’d seen in them just seconds ago. 

“I’m—I’m s-sorry,” Hunk choked out, hiding his head in his hands. He could have killed Allura, he could have killed _Lance_ — “I thought—I thought that—“

He felt Keith by his side, rubbing his back reassuringly as the stress worked its way through him. Hunk didn’t even need to explain: he’d thought that someone had taken Pidge and replaced her to either keep the rest of the paladins off their trail for as long as possible or get them to divulge important information about Voltron, and with the sheer number of sentient alien species with chameleon-like abilities that they’d encountered during their time in space and the targets they’d drawn on their backs as leaders of a rebel resistance, his fears were founded. 

He’d reacted just as any of them would have: out of an instinctual, visceral need to protect his team. Just as Allura had thrown Shiro into the escape pod when they’d been captured by the Galra, or Lance had tackled Coran to the ground when the energy crystal had exploded, and then a year later had sacrificed his dignity to make sure that the Qijitii wouldn’t take him away, and how even though it stressed her out Pidge was brushing up on her knowledge of healing and medicine so that she could be a better asset in the event of an emergency—

And Naxzela. He couldn’t forget what he himself had done—or almost done—during the Naxzela Incident. 

“Hunk, take a breath,” Keith murmured, surprising everyone when he reached for one of the yellow paladin’s hands and clasped it between his own, rubbing his fingers over the knuckles. “I understand. It’s over, and no one got hurt. You did nothing wrong. We should have told you beforehand that Allura had shifted. Don’t think ill of yourself because of what you’d do to protect your friends.”

Keith looked at Lance, his eyes pleading for understanding even as the blue paladin continued to regard Hunk as if he were a tranquilized wild animal. 

“Keith is right, Lance,” said Allura, now fully shifted back into her own form, the fabric of the dress tugging tightly at her curves as she placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know you understand that, too, or else you wouldn’t have risked your life for me just now.”

The blue paladin deflated, remorse swirling in his eyes as he realized how broken Hunk looked, clutching Keith’s hand as if his life depended on it, and then he was at his friend’s side, silently communicating to Keith that he’d take it from here, and pulled Hunk into a hug.

It couldn’t have been more than two doboshes since Hunk had walked into the dressing room, but as the frantic energy of the room finally died down, Keith became painfully aware of the absence of Pidge’s usual snark. 

Shit, how could he have forgotten?

He lightly knocked on the door, waiting for a few moments for her to reply. 

“Pidge?” he asked, keeping his voice low. There had been a lot of noise and commotion that she hadn’t had time to mentally prepare for just now, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was less responsive than usual. “Pidge, everything is okay out here. Can you let me know that you hear me?”

He heard a sniffle, and the sound of her fingernails tapping against the plastic door.

“Okay, good. Do you want me to get you your anxiety meds? One tap for yes, two for no.”

A pause, and then two taps. 

“What about your weighted blanket?”

Two taps.

“Do you need some more time?”

One tap. 

“Would you like me to stay here until you’re ready?”

.

.

.

One tap. 

“Okay, Pidge, give me a minute. I’m going to tell everyone to meet us back at the castle. Is that ok?”

One tap.

“Okay, I’ll be back.”

\- - - - - - -

Half a varga had passed since Keith had ushered the rest of them out, standing dutifully by Pidge’s changing room until she was ready. He said nothing as he heard her shift behind the barrier, the door rattling as she leaned against it to presumably change back into her original clothes. His suspicions were confirmed when the rumpled dress was hurled over the door, but he wordlessly smoothed out the wrinkles and placed it back on a free hanger, just as he’d been doing before.

No sooner had he placed the article on the return rack did the changing room door open with a soft _click_ , Pidge shuffling meekly outside with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her hoodie. Her eyes were downcast, red-rimmed and puffy, and her sleeve bore a sheen of dried snot on its otherwise crisp, forest green surface.

She pattered over to his side, leaning her head into his shoulder as she let out a long breath, allowing her friend’s natural body heat to ground her. 

Keith wasn’t quite sure what to do: Pidge had never been a touchy person (least of all with him), and the majority of the comfort they’d derived from one another had been rooted in solidarity and verbal support. They’d both gone into this Voltron mess having experienced familial loss and struggling to be at peace with their anger and frustration, and now more than two years into the fight of their lives seemed to have accumulated far more problems than solutions. 

Even so, he could be here for Pidge now, in this moment, when for once she’d allowed herself to focus on her own personal struggles rather than the great responsibilities heaped upon her. 

He could shoulder them for now until she was ready to bear them again.

“Would you—would you like a hug?”

She nodded silently, and Keith turned and gingerly wrapped his arms around her, feeling fresh, hot tears seep through his shirt as she buried her face into his chest. He allowed his shoulders to relax as her body rose and fell with muffled sobs, feeling the weight of how emotionally _exhausted_ the episode had rendered her, hoping upon hope that she somehow knew that he’d never judge her; never think differently of her for this.

Her eyes eventually ran dry, and sobs ebbed away into soft hiccups.

“When you’re ready,” he murmured, squeezing just enough to remind her that he was there—that they were here, and now—“we can talk. If you want, I mean.

Pidge nodded into his shoulder, returning the squeeze before drawing back, wiping her nose and eyes on her sleeve. She gave him a soft smile, eyes momentarily flicking to his face.

“Thank you,” she managed to whisper, her voice earnest despite its volume. “Can we—“

Her eyes flicked to the door, and Keith understood.

“Yeah, let’s go back to the castle,” he suggested, sighing in relief when her tentative smile continued to grow at the corners. “I, uh need to change my shirt.”

She snorted, elbowing him lightly in the side as they made for the exit. 

\- - - - - - - 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: GOTTA LOVE ME SOME KEITH AND PIDGE FRIENDSHIP!


	24. Year 3 (part 5)

** Year III, part 5 **

****

** WARNINGS: more insecurity regarding body image, and mentions of someone getting touched without their permission (within the context of being at a club) **

Keith had fully expected Pidge to retreat to her room the moment they got back to the castle. Her eyes still bore evidence of the tears, and they were both in desperate need of a change of clothes, so it was no surprise when she gave him a nod and set off on her way. Thanking him with another grateful smile before she disappeared around the corner. 

The red paladin had retreated to his own room, informing the rest of the team that they were both back via the comm link before he stripped and hopped in the shower. Something about the scalding hot water on his skin always cleared his senses, burning away his anxieties and leaving him clean and fresh.

He’d just managed to pull on a fresh shirt and pants and dry off his hair when he heard a tentative knock. For half a moment he thought he’d imagined it, but when the sound returned with increased insistence he knew exactly who had come to see him and why. 

Keith activated the door and Pidge padded in, looking freshly showered enough for the wet ends of her hair to dampen the collar of hoodie she’d borrowed (read: stolen) from Lance. Though her face was still somewhat puffy, she seemed refreshed: both the cry and the bath had done her good, apparently enough for her to be ready to talk about what had happened.

“You’re earlier than expected,” Keith said, gesturing for her to sit on his bed as he pulled up a chair he’d stolen from one of the labs for his makeshift desk in the corner. She sat cross-legged on the mattress, tucking her knees into the oversized hoodie as she burrowed her exposed feet in the sheets. 

“I’m sorry, you probably meant for me to come later—“

“No, don’t apologize: if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t think that you’d come at all,” he said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t blame you, either: I’m not exactly the easiest person to, erm, have a heart-to-heart with. But, uh, you’re here now, and I’m ready to listen. Whatever you need.”

Pidge nodded. “I understand, and thank you for your honesty. So, um, about today—“

She trailed off, thumbing the fidget in her pocket. “I’m still kind of piecing it together, but I’m pretty sure I had a sensory overload episode. It happens when there’s a lot going on around me, and I don’t really have a way of dampening the stimuli.”

Keith nodded in understanding. “Is sensory overload an anxiety or an autism thing?”

“Sort of? I’m not entirely sure, because having autism and clinical anxiety at the same time makes things confusing. My Aspie friends in elementary school would sometimes overstimulate, but I’ve seen people with anxiety go through something similar, too. To someone on the outside it might look kinda similar, but, I don’t know: sometimes, I feel like I’m trapped in a thick fog and can’t find my way out, and other times I feel like the world around me is crumbling and that I’m dying, and sometimes I kind’ve feel both.”

“But this time it was too many stimuli?”

Pidge thought back and nodded, but Keith’s eyebrows were still pinched in thought. 

“Okay, so there was a lot going on in the dressing room today, and that caused you to have a sensory overload episode. What about today was so bad? I mean, we’ve been in battles where there’s a million things going on at once, and you seem fine after those—“

Keith snapped his mouth shut, the words catching up to him.

“Sorry, that sounded insensitive.”

“Yeah, but you’re learning,” Pidge smirked. “Besides, it’s a good question. The simple answer I can give you is that Green is really attuned to my senses, and that she helps me filter through the stimuli during battle so that I can focus. I’ve also tinkered with my helmet a little to reduce static and other background noise, and have plenty of light filters that account for my nearsightedness and light sensitivity installed in the visor.”

“So when you don’t have your helmet, or aren’t close enough to the Green Lion and something over-stimulating happens—“

He trailed off, but she nodded. 

“That’s the gist of it. It doesn’t always happen, and usually I have things like noise-cancelling headphones to tone things down. In most cases I can usually move to a quieter or a less chaotic place, but today I couldn’t. And—well, I have some other stuff going on, too, so I was focusing on that, and—“

She trailed off, hoping he wouldn’t ask, but at the same time knowing that she needed to talk about this; needed to put these feelings into words, because they were _real_ and needed to be acknowledged— 

“Wait, what ‘other stuff’?”

Hoo boy.

Tension returned to her shoulders, and she looked away, hugging her knees close to her body. 

“Promise me, Keith. Promise that this only stays between us.”

The red paladin reeled: he’d never been trusted with a friend’s secret before. At least, not a secret like this seemed to be. 

“Of—of course, Pidge, you have my word, but you don’t need to tell me if you’re not comfortable. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

She sighed, twirling some of the hair at the nape of her neck in her fingers. “I know, but I—I need to get it off my chest. Just…please don’t think ill of me.”

Keith didn’t know what to say to that, but apparently his expression was enough to convey that he was beyond judging people for grappling with their thoughts and feelings: if the rest of the team had never given him a chance; if they’d never looked past his prickly and choleric exterior and just declared him a lost cause, he’d be more lost and alone than ever. If someone like him deserved that, then Pidge did, too, and a thousand times over at that. 

The green paladin swallowed, gathering her bearings. 

“I’ve been working out in the pool with Lance a lot lately. Originally, I did it to help manage my anxiety and clear my head, but I also did it because I wanted to be stronger. And, well, to look stronger, too. I told myself that it was because everyone on the team is so physically capable, and I wanted to make sure I could keep up and not be Voltron’s weak link, but after today I think it’s more because I wanted to be seen as a valuable asset to the team beyond my tech skills.”

Pidge bit her lip, eyes glued to the floor.

“I sometimes feel like the team sees me at the techie, and not really anything else. I hack and code so that you guys can do all the flashy stuff, including saving my neck because I’m not as old as all of you; not as strong as all of you. I know that a team is supposed to be there for each other; to compensate for each other’s weaknesses, but Allura—“

God, she hated herself for this.

“Allura is fucking _perfect_. She’s kind, and strong, and smart, and _beautiful_ , and everybody fucking _loves_ her. Any why wouldn’t they? She literally lost her _entire civilization_ and never complains about it, and she’s still out there kicking ass and bringing peace and love and goddamned rainbows to all the poor little planets like some sort of warrior goddess, and in her off time she takes care of mice and helps her super average pity-friend try on clothes. She’s the woman that every little girl on Earth looks up to and aspires to be; the person that people fall head over heels to impress and do stuff for, and I’m—“

She laughed at herself; at how pathetic she was for feeling this way.

“I’m just some couch goblin behind a laptop.”

Keith swallowed: he’d had some sense of Pidge’s discomfort earlier that day in the dressing room, but he’d had no idea that the feelings were this deeply rooted. 

“Pidge—“

“And don’t give me that ‘but you _are_ beautiful, and kind, and whatever’ bullshit, Kogane.”

“I—I wasn’t going to,” he half-lied, scratching the side of his face. “I was going to say that, um, well, I don’t know exactly how you’re feeling…”

She laughed mirthlessly under her breath at that.

“…but you’re hurting, and you’re probably not too happy with yourself for being so affected by it.”

He paused, knowing that she was listening now.

“When the Blade of Marmora recruited me and I left the team for awhile, we—we lost a lot of members. Kolivan always seemed so passive about it, like the fact that members know going in that they might die made it okay when they didn’t come back from a mission. I felt horrible, but like I couldn’t mourn; like I wasn’t allowed to feel the way I did because it wasn’t a part of the mission. I ended up hating myself for being so sensitive to the losses, and after awhile instead of acknowledging my feelings I let them warp me. I let them turn me into someone that didn’t even contemplate how my team would feel if I’d died.”

Pidge could just barely catch his voice wavering at the last few words. As far as she’d known, they’d never talked about the Naxzela Incident (or, more specifically, Keith’s part in it) as a team: it had almost been as if it had never happened; a nightmare hidden away in the past with Alfor’s shattered memory core and the shrieking agony of a dying Balmera. 

“It took a lot of talking with Shiro and Coran to come to terms with the fact that, as painful as they can be, feelings need to be acknowledged. We can’t just hide them away and pretend they don’t exist: it just makes things worse.”

“But what about how you feel about Lance?” she retorted, but immediately regretted it: Keith grit his teeth, fists clenching in his lap. 

“It’s not that simple,” he murmured, brow furrowed. “There’s a difference between expressing your feelings and acknowledging them.”

“And how’s that?”

“Well, when you acknowledge something, it’s kind of like telling yourself, right? Letting the feelings actually be there? When you express something, you tell yourself in a different way, but also tell others, too.”

“So you’re telling me,” Pidge said, “that accepting my jealousy rather than pretending that it isn’t there is the first step in reducing self-loathing? That…sounds a little villainous.”

Keith couldn’t help but laugh. “When you put it like that, it does. But when you accept that you feel that jealousy instead of letting it fester and turn into hatred—probably for both yourself and Allura, as well as the people that admire her—you can talk through it, and let yourself vent, and be reassured by anyone who knows you even remotely well that you’re _amazing_ , Pidge.”

She let out a breath, head propping up from its place on her knees. Keith didn’t use the word ‘amazing’ lightly, and even as she scrutinized his tone for signs of pity she could find none. 

“And I don’t mean to shit on Allura, but she’s had her fair share of challenges, too. I don’t think she’s ever really let herself grieve for losing Altea, and that she puts up a front so that people won’t worry about her. And for all her diplomatic finesse, I don’t think she’s ever really put forth that much effort in understanding what makes _us_ comfortable, and what subjects to avoid. She seems a lot more keen on appeasing these big, powerful planets that can have lots of pull for the Coalition than being worried about offending a bunch of Earthlings who don’t really have a say in whether they’re here or not. What she did today was proof of that: it wasn’t intentionally malicious, but based on how uncomfortable you looked she shoud’ve got the hint.”

Pidge shrugged: it was refreshing to hear someone talk about Allura and not gush about how awesome she was all the time, but at the same time talking about her friends like this didn’t sit well with her. 

Keith seemed to read her right away, and raised his hands in apology.

“In any case, this isn’t about Allura. She’s far from perfect, but so are you, and so am I, and so is pretty much everyone else out there. Life is messy and unexpected, so we can hardly fault ourselves for stumbling when things get hard.”

Pidge nodded, and Keith’s tone pulled a chuckle out of her.

“You sound like Shiro,” she teased, sending him a smile when he blinked owlishly at her. “Patron saint of pep talks and mid-afternoon naps.”

Keith groaned, but Pidge could tell that he was pleased with the comparison. He looked up to Shiro—hell, they _all_ looked up to Shiro, even before the whole Voltron thing—and he’d relish whatever resemblance to the man people frequently mistook for his older brother he could muster.

“In any case,” he continued, not forgetting their conversation, “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything when I noticed you were uncomfortable back at the space mall. I’ll try to be better.”

Smiling despite herself, Pidge waved her hand. “I appreciate and accept the apology, but it’s not needed. I’m a big girl, and have to be able to speak up for myself, even when it’s uncomfortable.”

Keith nodded in understanding: he had an incredible amount of respect for Pidge, and full faith that she would be able to handle herself if push ever came to shove. 

But right now she was still recovering, and the red paladin had a feeling that she still wasn’t telling him everything. There was something else at play, even if she didn’t quite know it yet, but he resolved to be there for her when she was ready.

“Of course, Pidge. And, well, if you speak out and the others start hounding you for whatever reason, I’ll have your back. But, uh, only if you want.”

She laughed, unwrapping herself from her hoodie and stretching like a cat as she stood.

“Sounds perfect.”

\- - - - - - -

After the mall fiasco, Shiro, Allura, and Coran had resumed their meeting regarding their plans for tomorrow night. Delayed as they’d been by the events of the morning, detailing their plan of action had taken an extra two vargas, and the night cycle was beginning to activate as they all finally made it to the lounge.

An old movie was playing on one of the holo-screens, the English subtitles that Pidge had programmed zooming across the bottom of the screen as the characters’ mouths flapped in a guttural Unilu dialect. Shiro recognized the film as one that Lance always re-watched when he needed a laugh: when Unilu syntax was translated directly into English, every sentence was an absolute banger, and the movie’s almost Shakespearean plot made each one all the better. 

But a few sentences passed by and there was no laughter. Shiro peeked over, believing the lounge to be vacant, but instead he realized that Hunk and Lance had passed out on the couch, huddled close in their paladin pajamas under a blanket from Lance’s bed. 

Just then, he heard a crash and a bang from the kitchen, followed by some muffled swearing and sounds of general disgruntlement. Allura and Shiro flinched at the noise, peering tentatively into the kitchen to see exactly what Coran had gotten himself into, and groaned in dismay when they saw that a large bowl of food goo seasoned with something that smelled especially sweet had spilled all over the floor. Several soiled kitchen implements had also made their way to the floor, all of them seeming to originate from the Jenga-esque pile of dishes that had accumulated in (and subsequently toppled out of) the sink. 

“As fascinated as I am by the younger paladins’ ‘chore system,’ I believe that leaving the dishes for someone else to do only works when the other two participants are here to complete their job before I am required to prepare dinner,” Coran muttered, dusting off his uniform with a huff. 

Shiro ran a hand through his bangs, resolving to roll up his sleeves and help the older Altean with placing the items in the autoclave. He wasn’t happy about it, but he figured that Pidge and Keith hadn’t been aware of Hunk’s stress-baking session and were too occupied with the day’s events to think about things like dirty dishes. Besides, if the smell was anything to go by, Hunk had managed to bake the cake he’d frost and decorate for Pidge’s impromptu birthday party tomorrow.

A brief check of the refrigeration unit’s contents confirmed his suspicions. The black paladin couldn’t help but laugh at the sign Hunk had scrawled on yellow paper over the cake container (“Don’t even think about it: I WILL have you launched out of the airlock :-)”), and surmised that Hunk was well on his way to recovering from the stress of the day. 

A varga later at dinner, Shiro figured that he was at least somewhat correct in that regard: everyone had an appetite, and the conversation—while more subdued than usual—was well within the range of normal, especially after a difficult day. 

What surprised him the most, though, was how protective Keith had become of Pidge: Shiro was sure that neither of them realized it, but every time Lance or Hunk sent over a questioning glance or began to ask Pidge if she was okay, he’d grip his spork a little harder and his body would shift forward as if to shield her from view, the beginnings of a grimace tugging at the corners of his mouth. The green paladin would give quick, curt answers (“I’m fine,” or “Yeah, you?”), then turn towards Keith for a brief moment before going back to her food, barely sparing Hunk or Lance a glance during the half a varga that they supped. It was hardly uncommon for her, given that she tended to avoid eye contact, but even when Hunk mentioned some mechanical scientific something-or-other that only Pidge could have had a working knowledge of, she didn’t give any indication that she’d even cared. Based on Hunk’s reaction he seemed to chalk up her lack of enthusiasm to the stress of the day and let it slide, surely the celebration they would tomorrow would cheer her up. 

The younger paladins all went to bed early that night while the adults and the mice decorated the common space. Lance had insisted on a green theme, so he and Allura were currently twirling together some lime-colored streamers to go over the entranceway (where Chulatt and Chuchule were patiently waiting with some tape) while Coran conducted meal prep in the kitchen. They’d decided on a birthday brunch, complete with the closest thing to pancakes, cinnamon rolls, and scrambled eggs that they’d managed to get up in space, and what little they could do beforehand was well underway thanks to Hunk’s detailed instructions.

And even though they’d already talked about it at length already today, Shiro couldn’t help but think about their plans for tomorrow night: there were so many moving parts; so many ways this could all go wrong, but this was their one chance at trapping a self-proclaimed ally in their own lie, and in the long run it could do wonders for the future of the Voltron Coalition. 

Big risk, big reward. 

“What are you thinking about?”

Shiro emerged out of his self-imposed trance, realizing that he’d wound his side of the stream garland too tight in comparison to Allura’s, and he hastily corrected the mistake before handing the bundle to Chulatt. 

“Tomorrow,” he admitted, eyes downcast as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just—there’s so much riding on chance, and if we fail we risk some very dangerous things being in the wrong hands.”

Allura conceded with a nod, picking up the roll of streamers and unraveling enough to pass off to Shiro. She began to twist the strands, the action somewhat soothing to her troubled mind. 

“Your concerns are warranted,” she replied, eyes never leaving her own hands. “I’m not feeling particularly prepared myself, but if the information that Matt and the Blade gave us is true, then we can really make a difference here. Enough, even, to push this war even further in our favor. I’m confident that, even if we don’t fulfill our prime directive, we’ll gather some useful information that we can use to strike down the threat later. Either way, we have to take this chance.”

Something about the way she said it turned Shiro’s stomach into a pit of writhing snakes, and—well, the feeling wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounded. It fluttered and lurched inside of him, but the nausea that came with it seemed to prefer his face pink over green. 

She looked up at him then, her serious expression softening enough that Shiro nearly dropped his end of the streamer when she flashed a shy smile. Shiro was less than a tick away from stepping closer to her (to do _what_ , his mind couldn’t supply) when Chuchule squeaked something that made Allura’s eyes go almost comically wide, and all at once she was handing the finished strand over to the mouse before her fingers were back fumbling for the roll, clearing her throat as she drew out another few feet of material.

Allura ran out just a foot or two short of Shiro’s waiting hand, and instinctively the both of them took a step forward, so absorbed in the task of averting their eyes from one another that their bodies only halted when their faces were just inches apart, the tips of his artificial fingers grazing the delicate skin of her palm. 

Their eyes had tentatively met for all but a second before Coran’s loud and sudden re-emergence from the kitchen had forced them apart, and the moment was over as quickly as it had begun. 

\- - - - - - -

That night, Hunk, Keith, and Lance met in the latter’s room while he corresponded with Yarrzavahal over the encrypted line that Pidge had set up for him yesterday on his communication device. Hunk had long since explained the adults’ plans to throw Pidge a surprise party in the morning, and they were now coordinating their plan to get to the ORYON satellite club they’d be docking near tomorrow after the adults had gone to bed early. 

It was really almost too easy: their hosts had agreed to escort one of the castle’s transport pods to the club’s private hangar, and from there they’d have celebrity-level access to all of the club’s amenities and services, including all seventeen floors of party space (each with its own theme) as well as unlimited food and drink. Lance was practically vibrating with excitement as he quietly relayed the contents of the texts to his friends; at how _stoked_ Pidge was sure to be when they got to the arcade room and the casino and wiped the floor with their opponents. 

They’d all be gone three vargas max, back in plenty of time to get to bed at a (somewhat) reasonable hour for training the following quintant, and Shiro and the Alteans would know none the wiser. 

Right?

\- - - - - - -

The place was a _scene_. 

Yarrzavahal—a reddish-orange humanoid with a dazzling neck frill typical of the males of the Tatzi species—was bedecked in a tailored suit and enough necklaces and jewels to likely circle the entire club at least once in their cumulative length. He had beckoned the paladins through the private entrance, where they would be free of the prying eyes of the press that tended to hover just outside. Though only slightly taller than Pidge, the Tatzi man easily cleared them a path through a mass of writhing, pulsing bodies to the elevator, which took them to a floating private veranda with a perfect view of the dance floor below. 

Immediately, of course, Hunk and Pidge were eyeing the apparatus that seemed to be keeping the porch afloat (“I’m not entirely sure, Hunk, but his looks like an electro-magnet to me”), while Keith propped his elbows up on the near-invisible glass barrier that kept them from toppling over the edge, sticking to his Blade training and conducting his routine scan of the new place.

“I take it that your accommodations for the evening are satisfactory?” Yarrzavahal declared, gesturing to the space. “I’m sure you are all used to a much more lavish establishment—“

“Nah, dude, this is perfect!” Lance interjected, stepping forward to shake their host’s hand with both of his, pointedly ignoring Keith’s grumble of annoyance when he’d practically pushed the red paladin aside to show his gratitude. “We can’t stay long, unfortunately, but with any luck we’ll be swinging back here after our next mission for an encore visit.”

“We’d be happy to have you anytime.”

Yarrzavahal clicked a button on his earpiece.

“Send Iolda to the executive room with instructions to give its current occupants whatever they please,” he muttered, offering the paladins a smile as the confirmation buzzed through the line. “Your server will be right with you, paladins: I’ve seen to it that she will get you anything and everything you need during your stay with us.”

Hunk’s eyes flicked warily to Lance’s at the way Yarrzavahal had said ‘anything,’ but by the way the blue paladin’s eyes were sparkling with mirth and humor indicated that he’d clearly thought the tone a joke. Paranoid as he was, Hunk wasn’t taking any chances.

But before he could formulate a question for their host that wouldn’t draw suspicion, Yarrzavahal had vanished, citing the club’s booming business and popularity for his sudden absence. The paladins thought nothing of it, though: it was a busy place, and he’d barely left before being replaced by a stunning, reddish-pink woman that appeared to be of a similar species to Nyma.

Lance, of course, was immediately smitten, and smoothly strolled up to her with his chest puffed out and his slender fingers pressed to his collarbone.

“And you must be the lovely Iolda,” he purred, flashing her his neck before sending her an exaggerated wink. “The name’s Lance.”

Pidge looked up from she and Hunk’s inspection of the hovering apparatus, wrinkling her nose in mild disgust at the blue paladin’s shameless display. Even so, she sent Keith an apologetic look as his visage hardened, jaw locking in place to prevent an involuntary snarl as Iolda preened at Lance’s attention.

“Correct, you would be, hmm,” she sounded out, her horizontal eyelids batting flirtatiously. “Kind, you are, Master Lance.”

Hunk choked on laughter, coughing loudly to disguise his amusement as Lance’s face froze for a split second. The blue paladin managed to recover quickly enough for the serving girl not to notice as she whirled around at the sudden noise, sending Pidge a deadly warning glance and a mouthed ‘don’t even think about it’ before Iolda’s attention was back on him. 

“Oh my _god_ , Pidge, tell me she’s green. _Please_ tell me she’s green,” Hunk pleaded quietly as she pretended to help him recover, still covering his mouth with both hands and feigning coughs. 

“Sorry, dude: she’s red,” Pidge muttered, but Hunk continued to ‘cough’ nonetheless, wholly amused by the absurdity of the situation. 

“Kind, yes, but not as radiant as yourself, I’m sure,” Lance teased, wriggling his brows. “If things around here were the way they should be it would be myself serving you.”

Iolda blushed (or at least Pidge thought it was a blush: the skin around her cheeks had become something closer to blue than to red). “Too kind, Master Lance is, far too kind!”

Pidge could have barfed on command, but at the same time this was far too good an opportunity to pass up.

So (much to Lance’s horror) she introduced herself, her smiles barely contained as she asked Iolda if she had a lightsaber or any long-lost relatives from Dagobah. At this point Hunk was so giggly that Pidge ended up having to escort Hunk to the restroom downstairs, and the two of them barely held it together long enough to get into the elevator before their peals of laughter filled the room.

“Oh my god, did you see Lance’s _face_ —“

“Pidge, help, I feel so bad for laughing—“

Knowing him he probably actually did, but the whole thing had been so unexpected that he hadn’t been able to help himself. 

In any case, it was good to see him smiling again, the awkwardness and almost eerie silence that had existed between them for most of the time since the incident in the dressing room at least somewhat scabbed over. In all the activity that had brought them here tonight she’d nearly forgotten about the incident in the first place, but a part of it bubbled up again now that it was just the two of them, laughing in some cramped elevator about a serving girl that happened to put the predicates of her sentences before the subjects. 

Their laughter eventually died out, and a pang of something ugly throbbed in her chest. When the lift finally came to a stop and opened up on the ground floor Hunk shuffled off to the restroom while Pidge excused herself to the corner of the bar. She sighed, massaging her temples and berating herself for caring about something so pathetically innocuous, and ordered a water while she waited. 

The close proximity of so many bodies down on the main floor made for a hot and uncomfortable experience, and before long Pidge had shrugged off her trench coat and looped it over her forearms, her now bare shoulders shrugging in self-consciousness as the welcome respite of coolness ruffled the airy fabric of her garment. 

It was some alien boutique’s version of a pant-suit that Lance had helped her pick out about a year ago, accented with a pendant and floating ‘earrings’ that she’d made from some of the scrap metal she and Hunk had salvaged around the same time to fix Shiro’s Galra arm. Pidge had worn it to a Coalition gala several months ago, but the venue had been so cold that she’d never removed her coat and, as a consequence, only Lance had ever seen her in it. 

Eyes downcast, she continued to sip her water, watching the fabric billow against her legs whenever someone walked by. Pidge was content to study the shapes and colors it made with each passing breeze, her mind not really processing any of the feet that passed by until a pair appeared and remained in front of her, shifting lightly in mild discomfort. 

Pidge looked up to see an Unilu girl (or perhaps she was part Unilu, given how her features were also somewhat Galra in appearance), one hand scratching the back of her head while the other three wrung worriedly near her waist. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said, blushing lightly when Pidge flinched lightly in alarm. Her hand immediately went to her waist where her bayard would usually be, but she realized with a sinking feeling that it was in the pocket of the trench coat she’d just removed. The Unilu girl’s eyes widened, and immediately all four of her hands went into the air.

“I’m not a threat, I promise!” she squeaked, her gaze pleading as Pidge scrutinized her with cold, practiced precision. They’d been ambushed like this in the past, and she wasn’t taking any chances. “I’m sorry, I should have never approached you, I’m just—“

She whipped her head around then, eyes flitting to scan the club.

“I ruggled up,” she sighed, looking on the verge of tears. “I was here with a few friends, and they went to the bathroom and never came back, and then this guy on the dance floor started putting his hands on me—“

Even as she felt her blood boil in rage, Pidge allowed her eyes to soften.

“I understand,” she said, extending her hand in greeting. “I’m sorry that happened to you. My friends and I will be here for a few vargas if you want to hang out with us. Hunk is in the bathroom right now, but he’ll be out in a few doboshes.”

Pidge felt herself blush as the Unilu girl hugged her, muttering a soft ‘thank you’ under her breath before pulling back and giving her a grateful smile.

“I’m Magaea,” she offered, bowing her head.

The green paladin bowed her head in return. “My friends call me Pidge.”

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much for your comments and kudos! I was a bit worried about the last chapter, but I’m glad that people seemed to like it. Some of you even identified with it, which is why I’m including some context from my own experience with feeling this way: 
> 
> I have a friend that I’ve low-key liked for years that still ogles over one of my other friends (even though she basically said ‘this isn’t gonna work’ when they dated for 0.2 seconds in high school and she has a boyfriend). She’s absolutely stunning and a pretty cool person, but I’ve always kind of resented her for being the person he liked (and probably still likes), and for always being the person that everyone says is ‘pretty’ and ‘girlfriend material’ while I’ve always just kind of been considered ‘one of the guys.’ I hate myself for feeling that way, too, because society encourages women to pit against one another for male attention, and by feeling inadequate I just play into it all. And saying that I’m a pretty intelligent and accomplished person and am frustrated that people can’t seem to get past the fact that I’m not ‘pretty’ (and, if I’m being honest, quite masculine for a woman, which I’m sure is a turn-off for a lot of people) makes me seem like a white dude with a fedora and a neckbeard, so nope. Eew. It’s the Male Gaze’s fault. 
> 
> But see?! This is what Pidge means by ‘heterosexual nonsense.’ It’s ridiculous. I hate it. Blocked, unfollowed, cancelled. 
> 
> In any case, I hope that this chapter somewhat communicated that with how Pidge feels. Having feelings for someone who says someone else is hot (either directly or indirectly) is hard, especially when members of either party are your friends. 
> 
> Also, I’m not here to shit on Allura. I love Allura, but she has flaws, too, both in this fic and in canon. She’s impulsive and kind of nosey (remember Pidge’s gender reveal?), which aren’t the worse things in the world, and she was kind of rude to the paladins on more than one occasion before she realized that they were essentially good people (i.e. calling them ugly, technologically inferior, not capable of saddling the responsibility of Voltron, etc). I thought it would be interesting to carry that subtle (if unintentional) ‘rudeness’ over into this fic, because so many fics make her out to be perfect and polite at all times and that doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t fault her for being wary of Galra in season 2, though: she actually made a huge and really mature step in eventually working with the Blade of Marmora, and I think that Keith understands why she was so cold toward him and doesn’t fault her for that. 
> 
> Also, we’re finally to da cluuuub! I started going to clubs with my friends recently, and I’ve been felt up a few times on the dance floor (sometimes it’s unintentional because it gets crowded, but other times I’ve had to use my elbows to keep creepers away =___=). It can be an overwhelming experience, but I find that it’s also a place where female solidarity can be at its finest: I’ve had girls (both my friends and people I hardly know) see that I’m uncomfortable with some creeper trying to grind on me and pull me away to dance. It’s like a sixth sense, when girls know that other girls are uncomfortable, and because Pidge is the only girl of the younger four paladins I think it’s important for people to see her having those positive relationships with other women.


	25. Year 3 (part 6)

** Year III (Part 6) **

“All right, let’s review the cover story one more time.”

Shiro shifted in the co-pilot’s seat, nose wrinkling as the scent of his freshly dyed hair as it fell into his eyes. Whatever cosmetic concoction Coran had rubbed into his scalp a varga or two ago had turned his hair an almost shimmering purple, and he was sure that if they lived through this mission he wouldn’t be able to get the smell of stale seawater and nail polish remover out of his helmet for _weeks_.

The thick layer of makeup that Coran had applied to conceal the prominent scar on his nose was not much better: effective as it was at concealing the marred flesh, it felt like someone had painted plaster on his face, and it seemed to crack and crumble every time he winced and flinched during their landing. The suspension in this particular pod was shot, and they’d had yet to order the appropriate parts to fix it, so meanwhile they’d have to brave the turbulence as they broke through the large satellite asteroid’s artificial atmosphere. 

“Shiro?”

“Yeah, cover story, sorry…I’m Kól, and I’m recently married to Solana. We’re both from the planet Tylec II and are on our honeymoon trip, and, uh—“

He pulled out a scrap of paper he’d concealed in a compartment in his arm, squinting as he read his own scrawl. 

“—uh, we’re gonna ‘party like it’s the fourteenth cycle of the Great Vinkeesh?’”

Allura snorted beside him, snapping the paper out of his hand. “It’s Vink _ae_ sh, _sweetie_ ,” she teased, flipping her now periwinkle blue hair behind her slightly less-pointy-than-normal ears as she guided their pod into a descent toward the hangar’s landing pad. “Did Coran even tell you what that means?”

“I was afraid to ask.”

She laughed again, voice melodic even as it was obscured by the static of their helmet radios. “The fourteenth cycle of the Great Vinkaesh was just before Tylec I was consumed by a supernova.”

Well, that was…morbid. 

Allura interrupted his thoughts with a gesture to the silicone sleeve in his lap, pushing a few buttons on the dashboard to engage the landing thrusters. 

“Time to put on your arm, dear.”

Shiro blushed, unbuttoning his shirt and removing the right half just enough to pull the lifelike ‘skin’ over the mechanical parts of his arm up to the very top of his bicep. The ‘skin’ was tight and uncomfortable, and it made a horrible squelching noise when he clenched his fist and tested the mobility of his fingers, but had made his Galra arm indistinguishable from his left flesh-and-blood hand.

Allura was grateful for the polarized lens of her visor, else Shiro would have _definitely_ noticed her ogling his sculpted stomach and pectoral muscles through the generous opening in his shirt. As the black paladin wore them more often, Allura found herself liking these front-buttoning garments more and more. 

She cleared her throat, and Shiro realized that he was still less than wholly decent and began to hastily work on the buttons. Alas, he’d had yet to become accustomed to the silicone skin over his prosthetic, and his attempts to do the buttons back up again were entirely in vain. 

“I’ll help you when we land,” Allura managed to squeak out, willing her mind not to stray to the artistic contours of his body as she maneuvered the pod onto the landing pad, exhaling softly as the craft came to a somewhat bumpy halt. 

The hull finished de-pressurizing just as they both removed their safety belts and helmets, and before Shiro could even fully stand up Allura was by his side, smoothing out the creases in his collar and front before her fingers danced down to his chest to the button by his navel. She refused to meet his eyes as she did them up for him one by one, willing herself to savor the proximity of their bodies even as she wanted nothing more than to do just the opposite and _then some_ , and it was all she could do to maintain her composure as the realization of it all slammed into her. 

Allura could not— _would not_ —focus on _that_ right now, but she could channel it to being in character for this stakeout. Speaking of which…

Once she had finished with the buttons, the Altean princess closed her eyes and focused on the last details of her transformation. Her skin shifted to a dark shade of plum, and a healthy collection of bluish-white freckles burst to life across her cheeks and shoulders. With a final, minor adjustment to her height, she was now just a hair shorter than Shiro, and looked every part the average equatorial Tyleci.

“Are you ready?”

She opened her eyes, taking in Shiro’s handsome visage before her. The purple in his hair, though unconventional, suited him, and the kindness of his eyes only shone brighter now that it didn’t have to complete with his scar. 

Tearing her eyes away before casual observation became staring, Allura tested the connection to Coran (who had docked in the crater of a nearby asteroid to escape detection) in her earrings, nodding when her advisor’s confirmation rang through clearly.

She let out a breath, shaking out her limbs as she collected herself before offering Shiro her arm, a determined smile curving at her lips.

“Ready.”

\- - - - - - -

An attendant was there to greet them as they descended the pod’s walkway, bowing his head in greeting as they presented their tickets.

“Welcome,” the attendant greeted, eyeing their linked arms (and, in particular, the shiny matching rings on their fingers) and smiling. “And congratulations.”

Allura blushed, smiling at Shiro as her free hand curled around his bicep. 

“Thank you,” Shiro managed to offer, leaning into Allura’s touch. “To be honest I still can’t really believe it myself.”

The attendant laughed, stamping both of their tickets and presenting them with a voucher. “Ah, to be young and in love,” he sighed, chuckling to himself. “I wish you many decapheebs of happiness. It isn’t much, but the coupon will get you a free photo in the booth just to the left of the restrooms on the fifth floor.”

Allura beamed, a genuine smile crossing her lips as she thanked him and gratefully accepted the voucher. 

The attendant hit a button on the console, and the barrier separating them from the entrance dissolved away.

“Enjoy your stay at ORYON!” 

\- - - - - - -

It had taken Hunk about ten doboshes to access an available stall in the restroom, and despite his proficiency with machines he spent another four and a half doboshes between figuring out how to do his business in the receptacle (he really hoped he hadn’t just peed into an air freshening unit) and finding the handle to flush. When he stumbled out nearly a quarter varga later, an apology on his tongue to Pidge for having taken so long, he saw her swiveling on a barstool as she animatedly gesticulated her arms, a young woman he’d never seen before clapping and laughing as Pidge’s mouth ran a mile a minute.

The green paladin didn’t even notice when he saddled up next to her, catching the tail end of her account of she and Matt’s fight against the bounty hunter a few years ago. She probably would have continued on for another quarter varga if the strange girl hadn’t acknowledged him, bowing her head in greeting as she recognized the ‘yellow engineer friend’ Pidge had described in her last story.

“You must be Hunk,” she greeted, offering one of her four hands. He gave Pidge a brief look, but accepted the girl’s handshake nonetheless, smiling despite himself when he observed some of her very Galran features. “I’m Magaera. Your friend Pidge was kind enough to keep me company after the floor got a little bit too intense for me. She speaks very highly of you!”

Both Pidge and Hunk blushed at the statement, but the yellow paladin was quick to recover. “Pidge has a knack of being there when you need her,” he praised, refusing to look Pidge’s way when she groaned in protest at the complement. “I would say more, but she’d probably kill me.”

Magaera let out a laugh, all four hands slapping against her thighs. “You two are what my father would call _ur-turgeleii_ ,” she remarked, smiling widely. 

Hunk had to snort at that. “Well a turgeleit is a podded fruit, but what does ‘ur’ mean?”

“Twin,’ Magaera replied, indicating the number with her fingers. “Once in awhile you’ll cut a turgeleit pod open and there will be two fruits inside instead of just one.”

“Oh, so it’s like ‘two peas in a pod!’” Pidge exclaimed, knowing Coran would love the colloquialism when he heard it. When Magaera cocked her head in confusion, Pidge laughed. “Where Hunk and I are from, that’s basically how you say ‘ur-turgeleii.’”

Her yellowish eyes lit up in recognition, and she laughed. “Where are you from?”

By the shape her lips were taking Hunk knew that Pidge was about to say ‘Earth’ and, well—

“Oh, we’re from somewhere over in the Milky Way,” he interjected, sending Pidge a subtle look when Magaera looked back at her. She sent him a look right back, mouthing _‘be nice to her’_ , but kept her mouth shut about the specifics of their planetary residence. “Just some backwater planet that’s slowly destroying itself with corrupt politics and greenhouse gases.”

“What?”

“What Hunk _means_ to say,” Pidge interrupted, laughing nervously, “is that our planet is basically garbage. Not _actual_ garbage, because I’ve been to an _actual_ garbage planet before—“

She was rambling, which Hunk knew she only did when she was either nervous or working her way through a complex tech issue. And, given that there was no tech in front of her to be confounded by, and a really pretty girl in its stead—

_ Wait. _

Did Pidge have a _cru_ —?

“Hey, Hunk, you coming or what?”

She and Magaera were already in the elevator, laughing as the doors kept trying to close on Pidge’s body in the threshold. Hunk huffed, imploring his friend to stop attempting to turn herself into a panini as he shuffled in to the cramped space. Pidge flushed as the Unilu girl was pushed into her chest by Hunk’s girth, and _yep_ , that was _definitely_ Pidge’s ‘I’m in close proximity with an attractive person and don’t know what to do’ face. He’d come to know it well in the past few months, laden as they were with missions that involved meeting so many people, and had fallen prey himself on more than one occasion to a beautiful chieftess here or a handsome metalsmith there. What could he say? Lance had been on track all along: the universe was full of hot people. 

When the elevator finally opened again the three of them practically spilled out, drawing Keith and Lance’s attention from a plate of funky-looking appetizers that Iolda had left for them.

“Where have you been?” Lance exclaimed, pouting ever so slightly. “You left me with Mullet-Brain here for, like, half a varga!”

Keith rolled his eyes, trying to mask the hurt with exasperation. “You could have gone to the dance floor: I would have been perfectly fine up here by myself.” 

“And go _alone_? Dude, have you _ever_ been to a club before? Twinks like me get their asses grabbed by weird people when they dance alone.”

Pidge clearled her throat, giving both boys a pointed look as she gestured to the Unilu at her side. “Keith, Lance, this is Magaea. Magaea, these are the bickering red and blue schmucks I told you about.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t ‘hey’ me when you know I’m right,” Pidge quipped, inspecting her fingernails. Keith pouted, but Lance had disregarded that a _long_ time ago now: this Magarea chick was _hot_ —

“And don’t even think about it, Lance.”

Ah, come _on_! 

“Magaea has had enough unwanted male attention for one day,” Pidge elaborated, placing her hand protectively on one of the girl’s shoulders. “She’s been here before and is gonna hang with us for a little bit. Show us around her favorite parts of the club. Everyone cool with that?”

This was news to Hunk, but he felt himself nodding anyway. Magaea didn’t seem shady and, well, if she did in fact know the club well, she’d be able to help them all make the most of their limited time there. 

Based on their body language, Keith and Lance had ceased their bickering long enough to come to a similar conclusion.

“Lead the way.”

\- - - - - - -

“What do your scanners say?”

Shiro winced as another club-goer elbowed his side, too drunk to care about how they were throwing their many-armed body about the place. He’d never seen this kind of centipede-like alien outside of the club before, but whatever they were they didn’t seem to be able to hold their liquor well. 

“Readings are inconclusive,” came Allura’s voice through his earpiece, and the black paladin sighed in frustration. “I’ve had a bit of luck picking up some energy signals in the south corner, so I’m thinking we’ll have to go another story up.”

“Roger that, I’ll meet you at the elevator by the photo booth.”

They’d both been combing the club for nearly a varga now, checking the devices they’d disguised to look like personal communicators for signs of energy anomalies. Of course, with the dozens of species that populated the place and the ensuing variation of their energy signatures, the task was taking much longer than planned. What’s more, their connection with Coran had fizzled out not long after they’d entered the club: by the sound of it a patrol ship had come a little too close to his hiding place, and he’d had to zip out of range in order to escape detection. 

To make matters worse, the layout of the place was vastly different on each floor: the one below them was beach-themed and almost entirely flooded with water and sand, and Allura had almost fallen into one of the deeper pools while she was scrutinizing her screen. Shiro’s socks were still soaking wet, and the humid, rainforest-like atmosphere of the floor they had just finished scanning had done little to alleviate the uncomfortable sensation. 

Save for the two of them, the elevator was empty upon their arrival. Shiro pressed the ‘UP’ button and pulled Allura into the corner, bracing himself to cage her waist in his hands and pull their foreheads together.

To the beady-eyed camera installed in the elevator their action seemed intimate, but if Shiro was being honest with himself then touching her like this both _seemed_ and _was_ scandalous. Despite the fact that they’d discussed the maneuver before the mission, he’d nearly had a heart attack the first time Allura had pressed her nose into the crook of her neck and wrapped her arms around his waist, but whatever the security guard was watching them do right now was likely warranting some discomfort and perhaps an eyeroll rather than suspicion. 

So Shiro surprised himself with his boldness and pretended to mouth at the soft skin at Allura’s neck, and willed his knees not to buckle when she leaned into his body and his lips grazed her jaw. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and he had to suppress a moan when her fingernails tantalizingly dragged across his hips.

“The next floor is referred to as the Blackout Room,” Allura whispered, somehow maintaining some semblance of professionalism in her voice as his breath tickled her skin. “The music is very loud and we won’t be able to hear each other over the comms. Regardless of what you find, meet me by the elevator in fifteen doboshes and we’ll go over everything inside of the photo booth.” 

“Understood,” he half-whispered, running a hand through her hair to dislodge something that looked like thin craft ribbon from her curls. Needless to say, the floor with the confetti and wind turbines had not been their favorite. “Stay safe.”

Shiro hadn’t meant for his voice to strain with worry, but as Allura pulled back and saw the fear in his eyes; saw the way his pinched brows began to crack the makeup concealing the scar on his nose, she knew that he hadn’t simply told her to stay safe out of habit.

There was real danger here. It was just the two of them, with no backup or reinforcements if they failed. If they didn’t handle this issue tonight, thousands more would die, and perhaps they themselves would be among them. 

She cradled Shiro’s head in her hands, massaging his temples with her thumbs as she brought their foreheads together, noses brushing at the tips. The unspoken ‘I will’ glinted in her eyes when she pulled away, and it was the last thing Shiro saw before the elevator shuddered to a stop at the Blackout Room and the world went dark.

\- - - - - - -

Lance was speechless.

For once in his life he looked at Keith and, compelled as he was to say something about the red paladin’s dated haircut and oily skin and sour demeanor, nothing could diminish the fact that he’d just wiped the floor with his opponents at alien poker. 

“All right, Keith!” exclaimed Hunk, patting the guy’s back hard enough to almost cause him to smack his head into the piles of GAC chips on the table in front of him. “Look at all of this!”

And Keith—of course, because he was _Keith_ —just _shrugged_. 

_ Honestly _ ? What a _jackass_.

“Sooo what are you going to spend it on?” Hunk asked eagerly, hands clasped together. 

“…I don’t know,” he replied honestly, picking up a chip to inspect the intricate patterns around the symbols that indicated the currency amount. “I don’t really need anything?”

The yellow paladin looked disappointed, but nevertheless produced what looked like a compact, reusable grocery bag he always had on his person for emergency supplies missions and began to scoop the chips in. 

“Come on, I’ll help you load all of this onto a GAC card,” he suggested, keeping the bag held open as Keith pushed the remainder of the chips over the side of the table and into the bag. “You can figure out what you want to spend it on later. You coming, Lance?”

He shook himself out of his internal monologue long enough to see Keith cock his head at him, eyebrows scrunched in confusion. 

“I told Pidge I’d meet her and Magaea here in, like, two doboshes,” he said, pulling out his communication device to check the time. “Go fill up your trust fund: when you get back we can all talk about what we want to do next.”

Sure enough, the girls showed up just on time, laughing and whispering amongst themselves as they approached the promised meeting point. As they got closer, Lance noticed that Magaea had some sort of fluffy stuffed animal that looked remarkably like the trash creatures that still inhabited Pidge’s room back at the castle clutched in her lower set of arms. Pidge, though empty-handed, smiled at her new friend fondly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she resumed their conversation.

Lance knew immediately that _something_ was going on between them, and as Pidge’s self-proclaimed surrogate brother he could already hear himself reciting the Shovel Talk in the back of his head.

“What do you think of her?”

Hunk had saddled up beside him, his gaze flickering to the Unilu girl. Lance could easily tell that his best friend’s protectiveness for Pidge was activated and on high alert in light of recent developments, but while it usually manifested as a petty, exasperated sort of paranoia, today it verged more on the air of cautious resignation. 

“Dunno,” Lance answered truthfully, sipping at his glass of water. “I haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise since Pidge started talking. Have you ever seen her so—open like this?”

Hunk shook his head. “Not with another person. Definitely not with someone she hasn’t known for awhile.”

And there it was, an edge of…something in his tone, and Lance caught onto it almost immediately.

“Are you jealous?”

The question, though hardly teasing in intent, threw him for a loop. His base instinct grumbled in reluctant affirmation, but the logical part of his mind knew that things were a lot more complicated than that. 

“In some ways, I guess,” he answered truthfully, glancing down at his shoes. He felt special when Pidge showed an interest in his life and hobbies; when he bore witness to the light that went on in her eyes as she was working through a complex tech problem and everything finally clicked together and made sense. Though it had only been two quintants since the incident in the space mall, he’s missed her warm presence and crooked, snarky smile.

“She’s been kinda weird around me since the space mall thing,” Hunk elaborated, shrugging. “I think I freaked her out. To be honest, I kinda freaked myself out a bit, too: I still can’t believe I almost shot Allura. I can’t believe I almost shot _you_.”

Lance pulled him into a side hug, squeezing his friend’s waist to the best of his capacity. “You didn’t know, and that’s not your fault,” he reassured, patting Hunk’s shoulder blade. “I think that Pidge was already kind of in a bad headspace to begin with, and the situation pushed her over the edge. She’ll come around, but she needs time.”

The yellow paladin nodded, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Lance had told him as much in more ways than he could count over the past two quintants, but if he was being honest with himself he’d really needed the constant reminders: Hunk’s anxiety, volatile as it was, had a tendency to fester without constant reassurance and validation.

And perhaps because of it, his suspicious nature was on high alert. He liked Magaera—or rather, he _wanted_ to like Magaera, for all that she made Pidge wholly unafraid to be herself—but the same part of him that admitted his own jealousy remained wary.

And as the two girls drew close and Pidge, red-faced and determined, stole a quick kiss on her new companion’s cheek, Hunk hoped and prayed that this wasn’t going to be Nyma and Rolo all over again.

So he’d make sure, one way or another.

\- - - - - - -

After visiting the casino and arcade, Magaera took them all to a floor that resembled a fancy food court to grab some snacks and drinks while they briefly rested their legs. They had a little over a varga to dance before they had to return to the castle, so little small talk was made as they downed their energy bars and fancy beverages. Pidge and Magaera seemed wholly engrossed in one another, the conversation between them so soft that the boys couldn’t even hope to participate.

But as a serving girl that looked like Iolda cleared their rubbish away and Pidge made a pit stop at the restroom, Hunk decided that he was finally in a position to make a move. 

“So, uh, Magaera,” he began awkwardly, clearing his throat when she acknowledged him with her gaze, staring at him as if they hadn’t all just been sitting at the same table together for a quarter varga. “Whereabouts are you from? What do you do? I feel bad that you’ve been hanging with us and we know nothing about you.”

Her eyes widened in realization, and she laughed. “My apologies,” she replied. “I told Pidge, but just now realized that I didn’t have the opportunity to really introduce myself to all of you. I was born near a Galra-occupied Unilu moonbase over in the Zephene Cluster. My father was a systems analyst there, and my mother—well, he never really talks about her.”

Keith seemed to perk up at the statement, and when Magaea met his eyes and sniffed the air the pieces began to click together.

“Absentee Galra mum?” she asked, smiling sympathetically.

Keith was inclined to ask if she was able to smell him (could _everyone_ in the Blade smell him?!), but he nodded. 

“I—think so? She didn’t exactly stick around long enough to tell me anything—”

“Oh, you’re _definitely_ at least half-Galra,” she remarked after sniffing the air again, leaning over the table to sniff the crook of his neck. Lance looked wary, and Keith was downright perplexed. “I wasn’t sure at first ‘cause this place _reeks_ of ‘em, but you’re vertiliid Galra for sure.”

Hunk’s brows scrunched. “Vertiliid?”

“I’ve heard that word before!” said Keith, his eyes widening. Kolivan and the other Blade members had used it on more than one occasion during mission debriefs and, as such, he had something of an understanding as to what it meant, but he’d never had the opportunity to confirm his suspicions. “It’s one of the Galra sub-species, right? The ones with the horns and the head plates and the elf ears?”

“I’m not sure what an elf is, and head plates are only on some vertiliid alpha males, but yes,” she replied, pointing to her head. “Having big, fluffy ears like me usually means you’re vurilsitid.”

“And you can _smell_ the difference?” Lance asked, pointing to his own nose. “Last time I checked Keithy-boy here didn’t have any horns, unless he’s hiding them under that mullet.”

But Keith had barely heard the insult: he’d spent _ages_ with the Blade and, despite their promises to give him knowledge, he was no closer to figuring out who or where his mother was than he’d been back on Earth. Magaera had been able to tell him more in a varga than the Blade had in over two decapheebs. 

“My smell,” he said, motioning to the area of his neck, his eyes wide and desperate. “What—what else—?”

“Well, you’re an alpha,” she said bluntly, laughing as his cheeks turned red, “And un-mated, but I’m sure you already knew that.”

He didn’t have to look at Lance to know that he was positively bursting with questions that he _definitely_ didn’t want to answer in mixed company, so he pressed on with a different topic.

“So is smelling the difference an Unilu thing or a Galra thing?”

“Oh, definitely a Galra thing,” she said, “but with mixed pups like us I guess it could go either way. It’s not super-important unless you’re, uh, _interested_ in another Galra, if you get me.”

Keith flushed again, but nodded. Suddenly it made sense how Rorix had been able to smell him at the Qijitii gala last year; why they’d used the word ‘ripe:’ the creep could literally _smell_ his virginity. _Eeugh_. 

Seeming to sense Keith’s discomfort, Hunk jumped into the conversation. 

“So earlier you mentioned the turgeleit fruit, right?” he asked, pulling out his touch-screen device to a new page of notes. “You’ve had it?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve been able to get it to mimic tangy flavors in hot recipes, but whenever I chill the food down the flavor goes flat. Your dad is Unilu, right?”

Magaea nodded.

“I don’t want to make assumptions, but since the turgeleit fruit is native to the Unil system of planets, I was wondering if he knew a way to keep the flavor even after the food goes cold.”

She scrunched her brows, tilting her head to the side. “I’m sorry, neither of us are cooks,” she replied, shaking her head. “Neither of us is the person to ask, either: we both ate nothing but standard, Galra-issued nutrient meal until my father retired when I was eight decapheebs old.”

Hunk felt his stomach drop to the floor, but he nodded nonetheless, offering her a smile. “Well, I thought I’d ask anyway,” he said, deactivating his tablet to put it away. “Thanks for your input.”

Just at that moment Pidge returned from the restroom, freshened up and ready for the dance portion of their excursion. Her earrings were glowing a soft blue, indicating that she’d activated their noise-dampening feature to prevent herself from getting over-stimulated again.

“Are we all ready to go?” she asked, smile bright and hands on her hips. “I can’t wait to check out this Blackout Room.”

“Blackout Room?!” Lance exclaimed, eyebrows shooting into his hairline. 

“Oh yes, it’s a club favorite,” Magaea added, clasping her hands together. “The room is completely black, and the walls change star-scapes every few doboshes. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Are there glow sticks?”

“What’s a glow stick?”

Pidge laughed. “Where we’re from it’s a clear tube filled with fluorescent chemicals.”

“Then yes, there will be ‘glow sticks’.”

“Aw, _hell_ yeah!” the blue paladin exclaimed, pumping his fist in the air as he pushed the button to summon the elevator. “Make way for the glow stick king!”

They all shuffled in, and as the door made a _ping!_ noise upon its closing Hunk clenched his fists, dread building in his chest as Magaera offered Pidge her hand and a shy smile.

He hadn’t wanted it to be true, but the fact of the matter was that this stranger was not who she appeared to be. 

From his enormous amounts of research on alien foodstuffs, Hunk knew that the Unilu had several idioms involving turgeleit fruit, many of which centered around the fact that, when an Unilu consumed the fruit cold, the reaction the fruit’s re-constituted proteins had with the enzymes in their stomachs caused them to become violently ill. No matter how far removed from their culture they were, Magaea’s Unilu father would have certainly told her to avoid cold turgeleit: it was like telling a child back on Earth to keep their hands off heated surfaces like fireplaces and stoves. 

So, by his reckoning, either Magaera was raised in an environment that was so dominated by Galra norms that she’d never been able to get in touch with her Unilu half, or she simply wasn’t Unilu at all. 

The implications of both failed to bode well: there was no telling how involved she was with the obvious Galra half of her heritage, and while they’d learned that being Galra didn’t necessarily mean that someone was on Zarkon’s side, her loyalty was still a vast, vacuous unknown. For all they knew she’d been sent to infiltrate their team and gather information about Voltron: goodness knew that probably half of the people in the club recognized the paladins from those silly promotional skits Coran had made them perform in during peak activity of Coalition recruitment. She could have been playing them all along, knowing exactly who they all were, and waiting for the precise moment to dispatch of them all for a handsome reward. 

But—but what if he was wrong? The last time he’d jumped to conclusions (which was, to add insult to injury, _less than two quintants ago_ ), Hunk had nearly shot two of his teammates. They didn’t need little old him flipping out over every minor hiccup in their plans, and Pidge _certainly_ didn’t need him telling her whom she could befriend.

Or date.

And now his stomach was churning, _embroiled_ ; and his fist clenched tightly around the railing in the elevator was the only thing keeping him here and now. 

Pidge would _hate_ him, and Hunk cared more about that than he cared to admit, but in time she would forgive him. It was better for her to be alive to hate him than to be hurt, or missing, or _dea_ —

“H-hey, Pidge?”

She looked up from her conversation with Magaera, somewhat annoyed that he’d interrupted her.

“Before you head off in the Blackout Room can I—can I talk to you about something?”

She tilted her head, earrings following the club’s artificially enhanced gravity. “Can it wait?”

It wasn’t said in a malicious or exasperated way, but that didn’t stop Hunk from nearly interrupting her with a hastily replied ‘no.’ Pidge’s eyebrows pinched in confusion, wondering what he could possibly have to say when they were not in mixed company, but she gave Magaea a brief look to signal that she might be a tick when they got there.

“Okay.”

Lance gave him a questioning look, but didn’t pry as he saw his friend wringing his hands as best he could given that one of them was still clutching the railing for dear life.

They continued on in tense, ugly silence as the lift ascended, and as it finally began to slow down again the illusion was broken.

“Fair warning,” said Magaera, “When we get to the Blackout Room the lights in the lift are going to shut off so that the space remains as dark as possible.”

And, _well_ , even if Magaera happened to be an evil undercover spy for the Galra Empire, at least she was letting them know that something was gonna go down. Even so, Hunk took out his communicator and turned on the flashlight feature, nodding to the half-Unilu in thanks. 

Sure enough, just as the lift whirred to a halt, the lights flickered and died, shrouding everything but the small spot of light from Hunk’s phone in darkness. Lance could feel Keith flinching beside him, eyes blinking rapidly to accustom to the reduced light. Something in his Galra genes gave him much better night vision than the average human, but sometimes it took up to a varga for it to fully activate. So, for all intents and purposes, he’d be just as blind as the rest of them for their time in the blackout room. 

The door clicked open, and immediately the paladins could feel the bass of the music rattling their bones. Pidge quickly reached up to adjust the noise input on her earrings, but Lance was already picking up the strange, staccato beat and experimentally wriggling his hips.

“All right, we’ll meet back here in 50 doboshes,” Pidge announced, whipping out her own device to send all of the paladins an alarm at the scheduled time. She looked up, noting the multicolored chevrons that lead to the elevator. “Just…follow the arrows, I guess?”

“All _right_!” Lance exclaimed, whooping excitedly as he immediately made his way to the middle of the floor, where an attendant bedecked in glow stick necklaces and bracelets was passing out his wares. “See ya later!”

He was gone in an instant, disappearing into the inky blackness with the rest of the crowd. Pidge, face still illuminated by her phone, gave Magaea an apologetic look.

“I’ll be back in a dobosh,” she promised, giving her a warm smile before elbowing the red paladin lightly in the side. “Keith’s weird, but he’s good company. You can talk about half-Galra stuff or something.”

Keith snorted at that, smacking Pidge lightly on the shoulder. 

She thought she heard something about ‘not sneaking off to go invent something’ as she left to join Hunk, who was pointedly avoiding her gaze and pulling at a new hangnail. He almost didn’t notice her arrival until she was right next to him, the light from his phone almost directly in her eyes and the light from hers just barely grazing his chin. 

After black spots had danced in front of her eyes and she’d adjusted her position to avoid the glare, Pidge was finally able to survey his appearance.

Hunk looked…profoundly uncomfortable, and it was beginning to rub off a little on her, too. 

“So what couldn’t wait?” she began carefully, trying to keep her own curiosity from prying the answer out of him. 

…

…

“Uhhhhh…”

_ Quiznak _ , he hadn’t planned this out at _all_ —

“Hunk?”

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry: this, um, this is. Important. I don’t want to tell you, but it’s important.”

Now she was even more confused. 

“So the thing is that, um, Magaera is lying.”

The way Pidge’s eyes flashed spurred a primal kind of fear in him, and before he knew it he was spewing out his findings, his sentences a mess of interjections and addendums that made absolutely no sense, and oh god _why_ did he think that he had a case against this girl—

“Wait a tick,” Pidge interrupted, holding out her hand before Hunk could begin another disaster of a sentence. “You’re telling me that, because Mag doesn’t know about a chemical reaction that makes some random Unilu fruit poisonous when it’s cold, that she’s _not actually Unilu_?”

“Well—“ 

“And that being raised on Galra food means that she might have grown up to be loyal to the Galra Empire?”

“But—“ 

“And that the only reason she’s talking to me is to get dirt on Vol—our organization?!” she finished, her voice an octave higher than it usually was. 

Pidge looked at Hunk as if he’d just slapped her, and though he wanted nothing more than to refute the last part—because she was smart, and passionate, and she positively _glowed_ when she was in her element, and _god_ , that was just barely scratching the surface of everything that she was—he couldn’t get it out. It was too loud; too dark; her eyes too wet and hurt—

But he couldn’t back down now: he _knew_ that there was a grain of truth to his hunch; he could feel it. Let her be mad at him. Let her tear him down, let him be the one to ruin the night, let him take the fall for it. She had to be safe. Anything to keep her safe. 

She wasn’t safe. She didn’t know. 

So no apologizing now. Not yet.

“I can’t prove anything,” he said lowly, clenching his fists, “But I know that something is off with her. She isn’t telling the truth—or at least not the whole truth. I know you like her, but—“

“But nothing!” she interrupted, poking Hunk in the chest. “You just—you’re just trying to be my chaperone! All of you, _all the time_ , it’s all about ‘letting Pidge have a childhood’ and ‘protecting Pidge from getting hurt because she’s small and naïve and doesn’t know her way around a conversation’ and I—“

She paused, swallowing loudly.

“I know I’m not pretty, and that I’m awkward, but is it really so hard to believe that someone is interested in me for no other reason than to want to know me? To, to maybe _be_ with me?”

And—well, he hadn’t expected that.

And judging by what little of Pidge’s facial expression he could see in the low light she hadn’t expected to say it either. Before he could answer (and, honestly, what could he _possibly_ say after something like that?) she shrank into herself, clutching her elbows close as she retreated into the shadows.

Hunk pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a ragged breath as the music pounded in sync with the throbbing in his head. It figured that his body was punishing itself for his apparent stupidity, and that the both of them would now be miserable for the rest of the night. 

And, if his hunch played out, their fraying friendship would be the least of their worries. 

For once, Hunk hoped and prayed that he’d been wrong. 

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Shit, meet fan.


	26. Year 3 (part 7)

** Year III (part 7) **

Pidge hated crying. 

She hated the way the sobs would rise in her chest and cause her lungs to seize; hated how every part of her body seemed to curl and twist and shudder when the floodgates opened. To make matters worse, she wasn’t sure if the eyeliner that Lance had helped her apply was waterproof, and she was now convinced that some of it was running down her cheeks in dark rivulets. Pidge was an _ugly_ crier (and, _apparently_ , ugly when she wasn’t crying, too), and she surmised that, to Magaea’s attuned night vision, she probably looked like a half-drowned old man with two black eyes.

Magaea. 

_ “Magaea is lying.”  _

She shook her head, trying in vain to shake Hunk’s voice from her mind. Mag _wasn’t_ lying. What—what Galra agent would try to win over the paladins with superfluous fun at an alien nightclub? How would any Galra even know that they were here? _Half of their team_ didn’t even know that they were here! She’d checked and double-checked the encrypted, private connection she’d established between Lance and Yarrzavahal; jumped through all of the hoops to —

_ Yarrzavahal _ .

Pidge felt her heart leap into her throat.

She remembered how the guy had been when they’d all visited Tatz a few pheebs ago: polite and always dressed to the nines, and one of very few people that had responded positively to Lance’s advances. He’d practically _draped_ himself over the blue paladin as he’d been evacuated from a faulty tunnel system they were a bit too late to fix, and Lance had positively lapped it up, accepting and reciprocating a grateful kiss in front of the rest of the paladins for his heroics. 

(She’d remembered because it was the day that Keith had finally come clean to her about liking Lance: she’d accidentally walked in on him splitting his knuckles open on a training deck bot in the middle of the sleep cycle, and when she’d threatened to call Coran and Shiro to corral him in his room he’d begrudgingly accepted her help and explained himself. They’d been closer after that.)

Something about the Tatzi prince, though, had always seemed distinctly _slimy_ , and it wasn’t the anointing oils he used during ritual wrestling matches. 

She suddenly felt a wave of guilt for yelling at Hunk, and then an aftershock of indignation at herself for feeling sorry about it. She was allowed to be mad at Hunk. She’d _continue_ to be mad at Hunk, dammit, because he’d made her cry and feel ugly and small, and had skipped at _least_ a few steps of the Scientific Method in his assessment of Magaea. There were just too many other things that had to work out for Mag to be someone drastically different than she appeared to be. 

But the doubt was there, now, and it would continue to fester until she finished what he’d started.

Pidge sighed, letting a final, ebbing sob crackle out of her throat. 

“Quiznak,” she swore, somewhat pleased that she was finally regaining control of her breath. _Do I have to do_ everything _around here?_

Wiping her tears, Pidge made her way to an idling area near the floor’s bar, using the light from her communicator to guide her. She managed to find a barstool with a protruding ledge and, at least somewhat confident that any hidden cameras would be unable to see her screen, typed out her password for her local data dragnet (which had been adapted from the tech she’d used to create the C.U.B.E.).

And she waited.

\- - - - - - -

Keith flinched as the bass rattled the room, the skin on the back of his neck prickling as the chord progressed into a warbling crest. He’d managed to find somewhere on this level of the club that was something of a happy medium between less populated and further away from the speakers, but the music and the noise and the bodies were definitely beginning to grate on his nerves. 

Just as his Galra genes somehow activated his night vision when Keith was exposed to the dark for too long, his hearing gradually became sharper as well, especially as his other senses were dampened. He grunted in frustration, scratching at his scalp in a futile attempt to alleviate the growing headache. He hated this: he hated how his body fucked with him like this; how it felt like there was some conniving monkey bouncing around in his brain and turning all of his dials. Usually, his Blade mask or paladin helmet would synchronize with his bodily rhythms and adjust sensory input, but he berated himself for having become far too used to it, and—

“Keith?”

He could make out Magaea’s voice through the haze of sounds, flinching when he felt (presumably) her fingers ghosting across his wrist, whipping around to see that he was face to face with a pair of glowing, yellow-green eyes. 

“It’s just me, Keith,” she reassured, and the eyes blinked softly as she focused on the red paladin’s sharp features. Magaea’s thumb rubbed over his knuckles, and he looked away as the gesture made his cheeks flush in embarrassment.

Magaea made a small noise that Keith could have sworn he’d heard Kolivan make at least a few times: it was something between a hum and a purr, and seemed roughly equivalent to a human vocalization of contemplation. 

“There’s no need to be ashamed,” she reassured, patting his hand twice before letting it fall to his side. He could hear the soft smile in her voice. “This room is a bit overwhelming for those of us with more sensitive hearing.”

Keith let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, wringing his hands together in consternation. 

The concept of his ‘activated’ Galra features wasn’t new to him: he’d noticed during his time with the Blade that his senses of sight and hearing became acutely better in the dimly lit, sparsely scented Marmora bases. Particularly strenuous missions had also temporarily added height and bulk to his build, enlarged and re-shaped his ears, or sharpened his canines at several points over the past decapheeb. The changes were usually so much more gradual, though, and only occurred when the conditions that activated them were present for long periods of time. Kolivan and the other Blades had hardly acknowledged the changes to his physiology, thinking it sufficient to simply tell him that some Galra with mixed heritage experienced similar reactions in times of duress. The conversation had been cold, clinical, and impersonal: not unlike the Blade’s standard mode of operation. 

But if anyone close by were to know what he was going through, it would be this girl that he’d met only a little over a varga before. He’d only known one other half-Galra in his life, and Regris—a quiet, reserved Marmorite—had perished decapheebs ago. 

So as much as his instincts protested it, Keith made the executive decision to open up to someone that was all but a complete stranger. He needed this: he’d needed this for awhile now, actually, but had been so focused on Voltron’s missions that he hadn’t allowed his anxieties to pool to the surface. 

And if Pidge trusted this girl—trusted her enough to hold her hand, and kiss her cheek, and lean into the crook of her arm—then maybe he could stand to trust her too. 

So he allowed his rigid shoulders to droop, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “I know. It’s just—jarring. I’m still getting used to the Galra stuff, and—my friends—“

He thought of Shiro, and the way his body still tensed with fear when a Galra ally came too close too quickly. Of how Pidge had looked upon Lotor with disdain and mistrust even after he’d surrendered and offered his help in defeating Zarkon. 

Her eyes flicked up and down, presumably along the lines of his body. “I’ll say: you’ve become taller by about a handspan in the last quarter varga.”

Keith flinched, instinctively staring down at his feet even though the darkness proved that there was nothing to see. The clothes he wore were Altean in make, and stretched quite liberally to accommodate the Alteans’ shapeshifting abilities, so it was no wonder he hadn’t noticed. 

He clenched his fists, yelping when his elongated nails poked into the calloused skin of his palms, and Magaea gave another contemplative hum-purr.

“What—what is—?”

He groped for the communication device in his back pocket, hands shaking as he entered the passcode and activated the front-facing camera.

He was used to the way his eyes changed in the dark: a few years ago when the feature began to manifest Lance had jokingly offered to drop him off at the circus. 

But _this_ —

His scleras were yellow-green and glowed just enough to register on the camera, yes, but his _ears_ —his, his _teeth_ —

Keith deactivated the camera, his breaths shallow and loud as the world swam around him. He was just beginning to be able to make out more basic shapes in the mass of people, head swimming with a cacophony of voices—

The hands on his shoulders grounded him, the near painful force of Magaea’s grip stunning him out of stupor. 

“You’re okay, Keith,” she declared gently, yet firmly. “I know it’s a lot, but try to breathe. Shifting is normal. This is okay. Just breathe.”

The red paladin let out a shuddering breath, tension leaving his spine as Magaea’s hands slowly released his shoulders. Nevertheless, his chest still heaved with effort, and his eyes remained wide with fear as his claws dug into his palms. 

“What—what was—did I—?”

He gave up, shuddering as he used a wall for support. 

“Wait, have you never shifted before?”

“Shifted?”

Magaea looked aghast (because he could see her clearly now), throwing all four hands up into the air in exasperation for the person who had never bothered to teach this kid about half of his heritage.

“Lots of Galra features popping up out of nowhere?”

“I mean, my sight in the dark has gotten better before, but—but that’s a _thing_?”

The half-Unilu girl rolled her eyes, her bright scleras casting the faintest of light along her facial features. “Shifting happens to a few of us mutts, but—well, only at certain times.”

And, _well_ , the implication of that was sounding more and more like something that Keith didn’t want to even _begin_ contemplating at this moment in time. He narrowed his eyes, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn’t he pried further.

“’Certain times’ such as…?”

And then Magaea blushed, this time herself glancing at the ground as if mulling over her answer. “I think it depends on the non-Galra heritage? For example, when a Tatzi begins to flash their neck frill in everyone’s face, or a Balmeran starts building a nest and looking for a nice rock to give to their sweetheart—“

_ Wait _ wait wait wait wait. Aliens—aliens went through—

“You mean like _puberty_?”

Because of _course_ aliens went through puberty. He’d never really— _thought_ about it, but he supposed that some species experienced adolescent awkwardness as well? I mean, why not? 

There was just one issue. 

“But I’m already an adult by hu—I mean, my other species’ standards,” he finished, gesturing openly with his hands. How could he forget his less than impressive growth spurt, squeaky voice, and terrible acne? His body hadn’t wigged out and gone Galra every time outgrew a pair of pants or got a new zit.

Magaea shook her head, laughing a little despite herself. “I’m sure you are, but if I’m not mistaken, adulthood and mating are slightly different concepts.”

Keith felt his stomach drop. 

He—he was getting purple and furry because his body decided that it was time to _boink_? 

Like, _now_?

Magaea patted his shoulder in sympathy as Keith processed the concept, his face burning in embarrassment at the fact that this demonstration of his—of his desire to—was so _obvious_ and _visible_ : given the way that Magaea was wrinkling her nose in distaste when she leaned in too close to his neck, he was sure he _smelled_ like he was horny, too. All the people he’d bumped into by accident thus far with a sense of smell even vaguely better than a human’s must have thought he was some kind of pervert. 

As unfortunate as the situation was, though, he was glad that Magaea had clarified that minor detail before Keith had gone ahead and _really_ offended someone. A part of him wanted to be suspicious—this all seemed a little too serendipitous for his tastes—but the part of him that trusted Pidge reminded him that he wanted to really trust Magaea, too. 

He had almost worked himself up to saying something in response when her voice cut through his thoughts, and Keith didn’t need his enhanced vision to sense the knowing (and somewhat sympathetic) smile on her face.

“Does Lance know how you feel about him?”

The red paladin froze for a fraction of a second. He scoffed, scrunching his nose to will away the heat in his cheeks. “I try to make it clear on a daily basis how annoying and loud I think he is.”

Her smile became entirely sympathetic, and Keith wanted to run: he wanted to shoulder his way past the crowd and curl himself into a ball in the tightest space he could manage, biting his lip until it bled as he somehow willed his body (and his feelings) back to normal. 

“Has he rejected you?”

__

_ Lance was running his fingers through Keith’s hair, nails digging into his scalp as he brought their faces together, sighing softly into his mouth as Keith bridged the distance between them. It was only practice: just enough to keep the suspicious Qijitii off their case, but if he closed his eyes—  _

__

_ Another.  _

__

_ Another.  _

_ “Keith—“ _

Magaea coughed as if she’d just been too close to someone taking a smoke break, blinking rapidly as Keith’s sour, concentrated scent finally dispersed around them. It was so strong that she had a hard time believing that a creature with any sense of smell at all could be in its proximity and remain ignorant of its pungency. 

“Oh, for ruggle’s sake, Keith, just go dance with him!” she laughed between coughs, looking around the crowd for a familiar face. She spotted him about ten meters away, a drink in one hand and a lithe Tatzi female in the other, face alight with energy and life. The red paladin followed her line of sight, and immediately tensed when he saw Lance affectionately run a hand down the Tatzi’s arm. He wasn’t looking at her face or her body, and instead closed his eyes in pleasure as a particularly tall Sylethi came in from behind and trailed his fingers along Lance’s waist. The guy _totally_ wasn’t Lance’s type—through his building rage Keith was sure that if the Sylethi had been human, he’d have been a hulking, greasy dudebro—but Lance didn’t seem to care, and in fact rose his hips into the touch when it skirted along his navel. 

And then it occurred to him: Lance couldn’t see in here. Lance couldn’t see, and for all he knew he could be getting felt up by some total creep, at the mercy of any species who had the distinct advantage of being able to see in the dark. 

Keith didn’t need to be told twice: he growled as he shoved his way past some of the partygoers, steely determination propelling him forward as something inside of him fluttered and squirmed, hoping beyond hope that he’d be able to get to Lance in time. 

To do _what_ , his brain supplied in exasperation as he looked at the creepy Sylethi in the eye, hair bristling along the back of his neck as he felt his lips pull into an involuntary snarl, exposing his now elongated canines. But his instincts seemed to answer that problem for him, and within a tick or two the Sylethi was scurrying away, the Tatzi woman in tow, eyes wide with fear as they’d caught Keith’s aggressive, possessive scent wafting far too close for comfort. 

Instead of being annoyed at him (which is what Keith had honestly expected, especially because he’d totally just cockblocked him), Lance swiped his head around, eyebrows furrowed in confusion at his partners’ sudden absence. He pushed back his bangs from his forehead, and Keith’s heart skipped a beat as the light of two glowing bracelets—one red and the other blue—caught on the bridge of his nose and the soft, tan skin on the inside of his left wrist. ‘ _One for each of the lions he’s piloted_ , _you dumbass’_ Keith’s mind supplied cynically as Lance stretched and reached into his pocket to retrieve his communication device. It wasn’t—it probably didn’t represent _him and Lance_ or anything. 

But before he knew it, Keith was slowly lessening the distance between them, the pungent, masculine alien fragrance Lance had liberally applied back at the castle becoming stronger with each step forward, until he practically tasted it when he was just a few feet away. The red paladin shoved his hands in his pockets, huffing a curse as he heard the telltale rip of his claws tearing through the fabric.

“Fuck.”

It came out as more of a growl: a gravelly, almost rumbling amalgamation of sounds coming more from his belly than his throat. He would have groaned to himself if he hadn’t hated the sound so much, because of _course_ he had to have some sort of hormone-induced sex voice that was _decidedly_ _un-sexy_ —

But then Lance’s head was out of his phone and sweeping around him again, turning the device around to search the immediate vicinity with the feeble illumination the flashlight feature of their communicators could offer, and _goddamn_ if that light wasn’t a zillion times worse with his Galra-adjusted night vision. Keith blinked rapidly, spots dancing before his eyes as the subtle curves of Lance’s face shifted back into focus. 

For a brief moment Keith thought that his entire world was crashing down: the two of them were practically touching noses, and Lance looked like he was physically restraining himself from reaching out to touch him. Recognition flashed in Lance’s eyes as the light from his device poured over Keith’s face, but— _no_ , it _couldn’t_ have been Keith: this guy was too Galra to be Keith, and, well, he was _way_ too hot to be Keith: this guy had actually done something about his hair, for one thing, and his _eyes_ —

Must be a distant cousin or something. 

“’Fuck’?” Lance parroted, chuckling under his breath as he raised an eyebrow at this not-Keith. “You kiss your momma with that foul mouth?” 

Lance slipped his communicator into his pocket, reaching out blindly into the darkness until his fingers brushed along the other man’s chest. Not-Keith shivered and growled, sandwiching Lance’s hand between his chest and his fingers as he canted his hips forward.

“No,” he heard himself panting, nose bowing into the crook of the other boy’s neck, “but I can think of a lot of other places I want to put my mouth right now.”

The blue paladin squeaked as not-Keith’s free hand tentatively rested on his hip, careful to avoid tangling his claws in Lance’s soft blue button-down. He could feel Lance becoming hot beneath him; could almost hear the blood pounding in Lance’s ears as he leaned down to whisper into his neck. 

“Would you like that, pretty boy?” not-Keith purred, hardly believing that he was acting like this, and before he could retract his statement and will some blood flow out of his junk and into his brain Lance’s other hand was on his cheek and pulling him in and

_ “ow!”  _

__

In his haste and lack of sight Lance had bumped his nose into Keith’s jaw, groaning lowly as he attempted to rub the soreness away. Keith held back a snicker, hiding his mouth behind his hand as the blue paladin nursed his face, which was now red more out of embarrassment than irritation. 

Not such a sharpshooter after all, huh?

“ _Fuck_ , I think I sprained my nose,” Lance muttered dramatically, trying his best to divert attention away from—well, whatever had almost just happened. “You wearing a mask or something?”

Keith chuckled and shook his head, taking one of Lance’s hands gingerly in his own, careful as to not let his claws scrape his perfect skin. The blue paladin’s breath hitched as Keith brought the hand to his face, pushing his cheek into Lance’s palm as he took his own hand away. 

“N-no mask,” Keith half-whispered, resting the hand back on Lance’s hip as he felt the other boy run his thumb across the seam of his lips. “Just me.”

“Just you, whoever the heck you are,” Lance laughed, and the way he said it made Keith’s eyes glow brighter than ever before, but then they were closing, and the light was dimming, and he was leaning in—

This time, Lance met him halfway.

\- - - - - - -

Pidge was halfway through her data scan and nursing a glass of nunvil when Magaea found her at the bar. Cursing her dress for not having pockets, she stuffed her device into her bra before whipping around, the Unilu woman’s eyes becoming soft with concern as she noticed the drying tear tracks falling down Pidge’s cheeks. 

“Oh, Pidge,” she crooned, and the girl looked away in shame, wiping at her cheek with the back of her hand. “What happened?”

The green paladin sniffed, swallowing down a heavy sigh. “Nothing,” she replied, exasperated, “Hunk is just” _–suspicious that you’re a spy that’s trying to get to Voltron through me—_ “being paranoid and trying to be my chaperone when he’s only, like a little more than a year—sorry, a decapheeb—older than me.” 

She huffed, folding her arms across her chest. “Sometimes, he’s even more protective of me than by brother, and it pisses me off that he doesn’t trust my judgment.” 

Magaea hummed her acknowledgment, taking the seat next to her. “I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but in this quintant and age just about anyone would be suspicious of an Unilu or a Galra.” 

Pidge looked at her wide-eyed, but Magaea only chuckled. “I’m not unaware of what people think of me because of my lineage,” she elaborated. “It’s not pleasant, but I’ve gotten used to it.”

She looked out to the dance floor, a wistful smile curling her lips.

“It’s actually one of the reasons I like this floor of the club so much,” she elaborated, twirling the bracelet on her wrist. “Most people can’t see in here: they can’t judge you by how you look, or what race you are. You can just kind of…I don’t know, be yourself?”

The way Magaea had said ‘be yourself’—as if it were some foreign, arcane concept—was heart-shattering, because sure, back on earth Pidge had known what it was like to be different; to have to dilute parts of herself to fit in with the rest of the people in middle school so she wouldn’t end up eating lunch alone, but to be different in a way that you couldn’t hide, that you couldn’t _deny_ —

Before she’d met Lance and Hunk at the Garrison, Pidge had been lost. She’d been angry at her classmates for not seeming to care about the suspicious disappearance of three explorers, her heart had been torn in two at the loss of her brother and father, and she’d been constantly anxious about whether she was doing enough to keep up her disguise; hoping that what she’d said and done had been ‘male’ enough so that she could continue to look for her family and pick up the slack the Garrison had left—and how all of that began to change after she was whisked away in a giant, mechanical blue lion to fight an intergalactic war. As a member of Voltron she could be _herself_ , and even though she was always exhausted and constantly risking her life and her teammates occasionally drove her up the _wall_ , she felt like she _belonged_ there; that she was doing what she was always meant to do. 

“Pidge?”

She came back to herself, and the light from the starscapes being projected on the wall caught on the curls of Magaea’s hair, her eyes like mirrors as they flashed shades of yellow and purple and green. Pidge blushed as the other girl leaned in, a shy smile on her face as their foreheads brushed together.

“I—I hope I’m not being to forward, but w-when I’m with you,” Magaea stuttered, her breath palpable against Pidge’s cheek, “I feel like I can be myself.”

And—and Pidge wasn’t quite sure what she meant.

To Pidge, ‘being herself’ was being a member of Voltron. She didn’t want to kiss any of her teammates (and that half a second at the Space Costco _hadn’t counted_ , that was a _fluke_ ), but she _certainly wouldn’t mind_ kissing Magaea right now. The music in the club was so loud and her head was pounding in her ears so hard that she probably wouldn’t even hear the accursed smacking noise she hated so much anyway. 

She wouldn’t know: she’d never been kissed before. Did kissing sound different when you were the one doing the kissing?

Did Magaea want to kiss _her_?

“Can I—can I kiss you?”

What? Pidge was a naturally curious person! It was an honest question, and Magaea hadn’t been _that_ explici—

Pidge felt a soft pressure on her lips, quick and fleeting and already done and over with when it finally caught up to her what Magaea had done. 

She’d—she’d just given Pidge her first kiss. On the lips. 

_ A cute alien girl had just kissed her _ , and it hadn’t felt gross. It hadn’t been slimy or sweaty or skeevy, it had been—it had been nice.

_ Really _ nice, actually.

“I-I’ve been wanting to do that for the better part of a varga,” Magaea admitted sheepishly, her voice soft and close in Pidge’s ear. “Was that—was that okay?”

And _holy shit_ , this girl was _too cute for words_ : how could anyone fake being this shy and sweet? Hunk was a dumbass, and Pidge _deserved_ this: she deserved to have a nice night out on her eighteenth birthday without a bunch of nosy surrogate big brothers spoiling her fun, and she deserved to be right for once. Magaea was a good person, and Magaea liked her enough to see past the fact that she wasn’t the most attractive person in the room. She understood what it was like to have people look at you and make assumptions about who you were.

This girl _got_ her.

So Pidge scrunched her eyes shut, found the other girl’s cheek with her hand, and kissed Magaea back, and sighed to herself in relief when she immediately began to reciprocate.

A moment later, when they finally separated, the green paladin couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with Magaea, instead staring intently at her shoes as her leaded tongue struggled to form a coherent response.

“That,” Pidge squeaked, her face prickling with heat as her visceral reaction to the intimacy finally caught up to her, “was more than okay.” 

If humans could blush down to their toes, she was sure she would have in that moment, because Magaea’s laugh was like tinkling bells and wind-blown grass and she smelled and tasted like vanilla and coconut and Pidge was far, _far_ too gay for this—

So she kissed her again, giggling and smiling and absolutely alight with embarrassment as one of Magaea’s hands curled on the back of her neck and another continued to stroke her cheek, brushing the tear tracks away with gentle swipes and touches. 

Her touch was electrifying, and Pidge felt her skin tingle and roil with energy at every innocent swipe of Magaea’s fingers; felt her face bloom with color and heat at every soft touch of their lips. It vaguely reminded her of the deep, thrumming essence of Olkarion, her own oneness becoming intertwined with something much more vast than herself, but at the same time this felt far more private; far more intimate: this was just for them, she and this stranger she felt like she had known for most of her life, in a fancy alien nightclub, enjoying one another’s company for a few vargas before reality called them back. 

Pidge felt her communicator buzz against her chest, and decidedly ignored it as she tentatively pulled Magaea in at the waist, surrendering to her safe embrace. 

\- - - - - - -

Keith had kissed Lance before (out of necessity, he reminded himself), and had liked it far more than he’d ever cared to admit, but _this_ —this was _indescribable_. 

Keith moaned into Lance’s mouth as he kissed him with everything he had, feeling as if he’d burst with happiness as a warm, unfamiliar affection flooded through him. He didn’t recall ever feeling this content in his life; didn’t recall a time when something had felt so _right_ and _good_ and he had felt so—so _full_. 

He couldn’t deny it anymore. He couldn’t continue to lie to himself about how he felt for this boy. He loved him—Keith _loved_ him— _he loved Lance_ , and Lance was _kissing him_ , and he never wanted to do anything else ever again, and—

And Lance thought he was some random guy. 

Lance was just out here chasing tail, making out with random people, and trying to have a good time and blow off some steam before they all got back to their ‘saving the universe’ business. As far as Lance knew he was kissing someone almost completely anonymous; with a face he could just barely see when the light from his eyes or the bracelets on Lance’s wrists coaxed parts of his cheeks and jaw out of the shadows.

As far as Lance knew, he wasn’t kissing Keith, but Keith _knew_ he was kissing Lance, and screaming at himself in his head about how _wrong_ that was. It was creepy, and predatory, and—

And very _Galra_ of him.

Lance chased his mouth as Keith suddenly pulled away, their lips touching once more for a fraction of a moment before the red paladin completely ripped himself away, stifling a sob as Lance looked at him with wide eyes, his lips still puckered and glistening. And it was so much worse, because Lance looked absolutely _wonderstruck_ , and his cheeks so hot that Keith could practically _feel_ their familiar prickle from more than a foot away, and he was so _beautiful_ and _radiant_ and deserved so much more than this—

A warm hand rested on his cheek, the pad of Lance’s thumb skimming the skin just below Keith’s eye as he brought his face in close once more. The half-Galra shivered at the contact, but averted his gaze as Lance sought it out. 

“What’s wrong?”

The tone of Lance’s voice betrayed his insecurity, and Keith hated himself even more for it: making Lance feel inadequate was something he just did, no matter how hard he tried not to. There was always a wall up with Lance when it came to him: a wall that everyone else on the team seemed to have breached long ago; a wall that had dissolved so quickly just over the span of a quintant or two just now when Keith hadn’t been, well, _Keith_.     

And in this brief lapse of judgment, one thing had become abundantly clear: Lance _tolerated_ Keith well enough as a teammate, and even as a friend, but as—as maybe something _more_? 

No. He was willing to make out with a perfect stranger, so surely if Lance had feelings for Keith he would have acted on them _ages_ ago. 

The red paladin flinched as a knot twisted in the pit of his stomach, the pang of hurt curling his spine and flexing his fingers and toes. 

“Hey, babe, you a little dizzy? Need a water break? Heh, am I coming on a little too strong? I can slow down or, or stop if you want. I know I can be, uh, a little much.”

And _oh_ , Keith could cry at that, because he’d give close to anything to hear those very words in a slightly different context; it was so unknowingly cruel and this had been such a bad idea and _how_ had he allowed Magaea to convince him to do something like this? 

He felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, swallowing down a sniffle as he allowed himself to lean into Lance’s palm a final time, simultaneously begging himself to both remember and forget every detail as he kissed the other boy a final time, firmly and passionately, pulling himself back before his instincts compelled him further beyond reason. 

“I-it’s not you,” Keith managed to stammer, hating himself more and more as Lance’s face fell. “I shouldn’t have—I’m so sorry, you’re amazing and don’t deserve this, I should have never—“

Walking away from Lance when he looked like that—the confusion, the consternation, the _disappointment_ —was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but if he stayed here even a tick longer he feared what his emotions would compel him to do next.

“WAIT!” came Lance’s voice over the crowd, finally emerging from his stupor just in time to avoid getting knocked over by a crowd of clubbers, and the crack in Keith’s heart deepened at the desperation in his voice. “Who are you? I need to—please, just talk to me!”

And Keith ran, hands secured tightly over his ears as he wove and dove through the crowd, the pulsing music not nearly enough to drown out the sound of Lance’s pained, desperate voice echoing inside his head. He’d barely made it to the washroom and locked himself into a stall when the tears began to cascade down his cheeks, staining his pants a darker grey as he buried his face into his knees. 

\- - - - - - -

By the time their quarter-varga exploration period had concluded, Shiro felt like his head was going to split open. 

The music they were playing over the speakers resonated just so with the metal in his prosthetic arm, causing it to vibrate so violently that he’d had to clutch his shoulder and catch his breath a few times after the bass dropped. The shaking had caused the neural connections between his brain and the arm’s interface to act up, and instead of actively participating in the mission he’d spent the better part of the last thirteen quintants blinking away the white spots dancing in front of his eyes. As he made his way to the elevator shaft he hoped that Allura was faring far better: they didn’t have much time before the scheduled pickup time, and given that their communications with Coran had been interrupted they couldn’t risk changing their schedule. 

He’d just hit the button to summon the elevator when he felt a pressure on his waist, and was promptly flipped about face by an unmistakable force. 

Allura pulled Shiro in so suddenly that their foreheads bumped together, eliciting a hissed curse out of the both of them before the beat of the music swung them back into rhythm. Shiro tensed, and Allura heard the unasked question.

“By the bar,” she answered, pulling him towards the fixture as best she could through the sea of bodies. “I lost my necklace. Help me find it?”

Shiro’s eyes widened, and he nodded in understanding: they’d found what they were looking for, and it was time to close in.

But something over here smelled… _musky_? It made Shiro cough, face wrinkling as the scent assaulted his nose, and reminded him far too much of the body spray his friends on the soccer team would regale the locker room with after practice in middle school. It seemed that AXE was another universal constant he could add to the list. Slav would be thrilled. 

And Shiro was _not_ thinking about Slav as this beautiful woman put her hands all over him, gripping his hips a bit more possessively and her face a bit closer to his than he’d distinctly remembered them being just a few ticks ago. The black paladin gulped, feeling his heart flutter like a desperate caged bird as her lips grazed the corner of his chin, the smoothness of her face scraping against his stubble. 

Something about all of it made him feel incredibly… _reckless_. And, well, they were acting; doing anything they could to avoid getting caught. _This_ would be convincing. 

“Sure, I’ll help you find your necklace,” Shiro purred, rolling his hips in a way that made Allura gasp beside him, and her response was enough to embolden him to place a hand on her waist and ask:

“But what do I get in return when I find it?”

To his relief Allura chuckled, playfully swatting his hand away as she looped her arms around his neck, pressing her chest into his in a way that made Shiro’s breath hitch and will the blood in his head to _stay_ there, thank you very much—

“How about,” she suggested, leaning in to whisper something in Shiro’s ear, and what she said was so utterly _filthy_ that he had to take stock and make sure he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. A part of him was already hating himself for stowing _that_ away in his spank bank, but another was throwing caution to the wind and pushing his torso even more firmly into hers, hands trailing down to the small of her back. 

“Well,” Shiro croaked more than whispered, not having to fake his interest one bit, “let’s go look for that necklace then.”

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Yum what an angst fest 
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> So everyone in the Garrison Trio is bi or pan thanks for coming to my TED talk
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> Also, what did Allura whisper to Shiro??? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Hmmm… that would _probably_ bump up this fic to an M rating *sweats*
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> Comments and kudos appreciated, as always! Thanks so much for reading!!!


	27. Year 3 (part 8)

** Year 3 (part 8) **

****

_ WARNINGS: Very brief mention of vomiting, as well as a mild mention/brief discussion of non-consensual touching. _

\- - - - - - -

Hunk shoved the communicator back into his pocket with a resigned huff, running a hand through his bangs as he leaned against the washroom sink. 

Pidge _always_ picked up her phone: there were times when she would be in the middle of a conference or diplomatic meeting and, due to her station as a paladin, she had every excuse in the book to drop everything else she was doing and answer within the first three rings. They’d made something of a game of Pidge’s responses being vague enough that other meeting attendees would think that the interruption was warranted: just over a week ago Hunk had called her in to tell her that the peanut butter cookies he’d made were ready, and Pidge had made it seem like there was a technical emergency in the kitchen so that she could go back in time and snag a few cookies while they were still hot. 

Hunk was making some calculations in his head of just how many peanut butter cookies it would take to make up for… _whatever_ hole he’d just dug himself into, when he heard a soft sniffle from one of the nearby stalls. It seemed like he wasn’t the only sad sap on this floor that was having a bad night. 

Not able to help himself, the yellow paladin stooped down just low enough to see a pair of feet peeking out from the gap beneath the stall, and swallowed loudly as he recognized a pair of dark red, beaten-up Altean high-tops. 

“ _Keith?_ ”

The sniffling abruptly stopped and the feet recoiled from view, presumably perching on the rim of the toilet seat. Hunk sighed: he hadn’t been sure at first (namely because he’d _never_ heard Keith cry in the almost three years they’d been living and working together), but the retreat left no doubt. 

What had _he_ gotten himself into?

“Dude, are you hurt? Did you drink too much nunvil and get sick? Heh, that last gala we went to, you know the one with the ice sculptures? Whatever they put in that punch did _not_ agree with me, and I low-key thought I was gonna die. I mean, I can get you a glass of water, or hold your hair if you need to barf—“

Hunk trailed off, awkwardly shifting his weight between his feet as Keith came at him with nothing but silence. Usually by now he would have at least snapped that he was ‘fine’ and stormed away, but seeing as he had nowhere to go…

“It’s okay, dude, you’re probably not in the mood for me right now,” he sighed, looking to the exit. “I’ll just see you in—“

“Don’t leave.”

It was barely even a whisper, and his voice sounded slightly deeper than usual, but Keith may as well have shouted: he _never_ asked for anything, let alone something like this. He was—really messed up, wasn’t he? 

Hunk perched himself on the sink, ignoring both the discomfort of his ass on an unforgiving surface as well as the dirty looks he got from other club patrons as his bulk completely blocked one of the faucets. He rapped his knuckles on the side of the toilet stall, signaling to Keith that he was still there.

“I’m all ears, Keith,” Hunk reassured, “but if you just want me to stay with you that’s okay, too. I’ve had kind’ve a shitty night, too, so we can just, I don’t know…wallow together, keep ourselves out of trouble, you know.”

And Keith had to snort at that, because the kind of trouble he’d gotten himself into wouldn’t go away after tonight. He had a sneaking suspicion that Hunk’s wouldn’t, either, and a part of him was glad that he could at least have someone to be miserable with. 

But first thing was first: he was going to come out of this stall at some point in the next half varga whether he liked it or not, and Hunk would see him like—like _this_ : the ears, his skin, his height, his eyes, his teeth, and god knew what else. He was grateful that he hadn’t sprouted a tail or some shit, but _goddamn_ , Hunk was going to _flip_. 

But then Keith remembered his Marmora trials, learning of his heritage and for the better part of the journey back to the castle trying to figure out the best way to break it to the rest of the team that he’d splashed in the same gene pool as their enemies. He remembered he and Hunk’s mission to collect scaultrite from the weblum, and how the yellow paladin had incessantly teased him about his ‘inner Galra;’ how despite his outwardly annoying approach, Hunk had really been the first member of their team to really and truly accept Keith’s lineage. It made sense that he would be the first to know about this more recent development with his appearance: this, what did Magaea call it? Shifting. 

“Hunk?”

“Hmmm?”

“I, uh…I think you need to see something. But, um. I’m not—I’m not ready for the others to know yet.”

“That’s okay, it’ll just be between the two of us.”

Keith reached up to unlock the stall, grimacing as patches of purple mottled with peach on his skin in the washroom’s low light. With a resounding _click_ , the door fell open and Keith stepped out.

Hunk’s law hit the floor, pressing his hands together in excitement as the red paladin emerged in all of his half-Galra glory, looking shyly at the floor as Hunk’s immediate and overwhelming acceptance flooded over him. 

Keith chanced a look in the mirror, and nearly jumped in surprise: his Galra features were a _lot_ less pronounced than they had been when he’d checked himself in his communicator’s camera less than twenty quintants ago, and seemed to be slowly fading away on their own without too much trouble. He suspected that the increased light and distance from the dance floor had halted the shift before it had taken its full course and, well, if one thing had to go well for him that night—

Hunk’s teeth clacked as he clamped him mouth shut, pulling Keith out of his musings. He seemed to think for a moment, offering the red paladin an awkward (but understanding) smile.

“Hey, Galra Keith.”

\- - - - - - -

** GROUP CHAT ** – _hunkules, sharpshooter_

_ sharpshooter  _ – hey hunk, can u meet me by the elevator? need to talk

_sharpshooter_ – hunk? Huuuuunk

Lance groaned as the screen of his communicator remained unchanged, pressing his fingers into his temples after he’d slid the device back into his pocket. He’d been idling by the elevator for about five doboshes now, leg bouncing with anxiety as he processed the events of the past quarter varga. 

The ruddy, primal haze that had overwhelmed his senses upon the stranger’s arrival had pretty much worked its way through him, but even now his lingering touches and searing kisses swirled in is memory and made it _very_ difficult to perceive what had just happened in a rational manner. This guy had come out of fucking _nowhere_ and swept him off his feet, beating him at his own game in the most mutually satisfying way possible. 

And _then_ Mystery Man seemed to realize how forward he was being and chickened out, his smittening alien ninja powers aiding in a swift escape. 

And, well, Lance had kissed his fair share of people, but getting kissed by this guy was like being hit by a bus, except that that bus was a cute Galra’s pretty little mouth, and—his force, his passion, his _ardor_ had been addicting, and even now some of the tingle and excitement from their chance encounter remained, warming his bones and sending his heart aflutter.

He _needed_ to talk to someone about this; needed to process what had just transpired between himself and this anonymous stranger; needed to acknowledge that it had been real. Hunk would know what to do: he’d helped Lance through his first break-up, then through his bi crisis, and then most recently with his confusing feelings for Keith that he still had yet to fully acknowledge and process. Surely he’d know exactly what to do in a situation like this.

\- - - - - - -

“So you’re telling me that you were out on the dance floor when you started changing?”

Keith and Hunk had made their way over to the small seating area in the washroom, each of them leaning against adjacent walls as they conversed. At this point Keith was about 90% back to his normal appearance, his slightly pointed ears and patches of purple skin the only indications of his brief transformation.

The red paladin twiddled his fingers, glancing at the floor. “Yeah: I mean, I’ve had things like my eyes and ears change before, especially after spending a long time with the Blade, but nothing this sudden and, well, not this much. Magaea told me it was normal, but—“

“Wait, you talked to _Magaea_?”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Is that a problem? I mean, I know you don’t like her, but—“

“I never said I didn’t like her.”

“You didn’t have to, dude,” Keith retorted, nose wrinkling. “You smell jealous.”

“I _what?_ ”

Keith raised both of his eyebrows this time, giving Hunk a deadpan stare. 

“You smell jealous,” he repeated matter-of-factly, as if he were commenting on the weather. “It’s not a big deal: Pidge is, like, your best friend, and Magaea is spending lots of time with her.”

Hunk felt himself frown, his heart twinging uncomfortably in his chest, but he’d put that aside for now because _since when_ could Keith smell emotions? 

“Okay, dude, first of all, I’m _not_ jealous,” Hunk began, chuckling slightly as he dismissed the thought with a gesture of his hand, “Second of all, _you can smell people_? Is that, like, part of your new alien superpowers?”

“Oh, so now being able to smell your nonexistent jealousy is a superpower now?”

Hunk stuttered and blushed, feeling more than a little bit of déjà vu at being called out for the second time that night on this issue. He’d literally _just_ gone over this with Lance, and didn’t feel like opening this can of worms again.

“’Jealous’ isn’t the right word,” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You’re making it sound like—you know, whatever. I just—I don’t trust her. Magaea, I mean. And I _know_ Pidge would listen to what I have to say about it if she wasn’t so googoo-eyed over this girl. It’s like all of her caution and reasoning have gone out the airlock.”

And Keith had to sigh at that: at least he wasn’t the only person in the universe whose common sense seemed to retreat when matters of the heart were involved. 

He was about to say as much when Hunk’s communicator vibrated.

“Sorry dude, one tick,” he muttered, fishing it out and scanning over the messages:

** GROUP CHAT ** – _hunkules, sharpshooter_

_ sharpshooter  _ – hey hunk, can u meet me by the elevator? need to talk

_sharpshooter_ – hunk? Huuuuunk

__

_ sharpshooter  _ – help me Obi wan Kenobe wherevr the fuck u are ur my only ho

__

Hunk massaged his temple and groaned: it had been maybe thirty doboshes— _thirty doboshes_ — and Lance had already managed to get himself in trouble. 

“What is it?”

Keith suddenly seemed a lot more closed off, as if whoever Hunk was texting was now privy to their conversation. 

“Lance is freaking out about something, and—whoa, hey, no need to get all jumpy!”

Keith had practically clawed a hole into the wall with his nails, body taut as a bowstring as he stared wide-eyed at the yellow paladin, his gaze simultaneously threatening and pleading. 

“Easy, Keith, easy: I’m not gonna tall him where we are. Your secret is safe with me as long as you want it to be kept a secret.”

And—well, Keith relaxed, but not enough to alert Hunk that he’d reached the root of the problem. 

Ah. So something had happened between them? Was that why Lance was reaching out? _Urgh_ —Shiro and Pidge weren’t around to talk Keith down, so now he’d have to choose who to console first, and Keith was looking more and more like a cornered wild animal by the tick, so it looked like the decision was being made for him.

\- - - - - - -

_ [hunkules is typing] _

Lance sighed in relief as the ellipse indicated Hunk’s acknowledgment: he gripped the device in both hands, going white-knuckled as the yellow paladin constructed his answer.

_ hunkules –  _ hey buddy I’m sorry for not getting back to u sooner: I’m a little busy atm can we talk back at the castle?

_ Busy? _

Biting his lip, Lance reread the message. What could he have possibly been dealing with that warranted a rain check for boy talk?

\- - - - - - -

_ sharpshooter _ – yea sure man. U ok?

Hunk typed out a reply with one hand as he made a placating gesture with the other. “Sorry, Keith, I’m just telling Lance that we’ll talk back at the castle. I’m, uh,” he finished the message and pressed send, “I’m assuming this has something to do with Lance?”

There it was: Keith’s eyes became particularly shifty, fingers twining together in consternation, and the fear and anxiety he’d managed to get some semblance of control over was beginning to resurface. In just a few moments, however, guilt had quickly replaced the fear, and Keith was curled up with his back to the wall and his chin resting on his knees.

Hunk sat beside him, propping his legs out just enough that people coming in and out of the washroom wouldn’t hit his feet whenever the door swung open.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Hunk posited after they’d sat in silence for about a dobosh, nudging Keith with his elbow just enough to get him out of his headspace, “We can just chill for awhile if you’d like, but whatever you do want to tell me stays between us, okay?”

He nodded, seeming to think on Hunk’s proposal as the other boy silenced his phone, placing it deep in his pocket to indicate to Keith that he had his full and undivided attention. Shiro—his typical go-to person for things like this—wasn’t here right now, but the yellow paladin’s patience and kindness were certainly not an undesirable substitute: he could certainly see why Pidge had compared him to a yellow Labrador on more than one occasion.

He just hoped that Hunk could forgive him for this. 

“I did something that I probably shouldn’t have, and I—I wouldn’t blame you if you thought badly of me after this,” Keith murmured, voice quavering with emotion. “But w-when I started to shift, I also, um…”

Keith swallowed, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides. 

“Magaea told me that it was normal for half-Galra like us to experience some sort of cycle when it’s time to, um, mate.” 

Hunk’s eyes widened, but he nodded for Keith to go on.

“During this cycle, our Galra genes are supposed to, I don’t know, come to the surface? Activate? It started off as a headache, and then I was six inches taller and had the claws and the fangs and the ears, but I think I also, um…”

He trailed off, clearing his throat.

“Suddenly got thirsty as fuck?” Hunk supplied, and Keith blushed as red as his lion at that all the way to the tips of his ears as Hunk chuckled good-naturedly, patting the other boy on the back.

“It wasn’t just that,” Keith amended quickly, biting his lip, “when I saw Lance, he was—he was dancing with two other people, and one of them was being kinda creepy and before I knew it I was a couple of steps away to tell him to fuck off, but they must have smelled my weird Galra-ness and split. Lance found me, but he didn’t recognize me because the light was really bad and, by that time, I’m pretty sure I had gone full Galra, and he—“

Keith sighed, hugging his knees closer to his chest. 

“He let his guard down. Lance opened himself up to me, a person he thought was a complete stranger, who looked _Galra_ , and when we—“

He swallowed, biting his lip. 

“When we k-kissed—when he _looked at me_ —I felt like we could maybe—“

And, if only for a moment, the look Hunk was giving him—the knowing smirk, a shy sympathy, and an excitement he couldn’t quite hide—the ‘maybe’ and the ‘could’ seemed possible.

“But it was a mistake. Lance would have _never_ acted that way if he’d known it was me, and it _hurts_ , but what hurts more is that I feel like I violated his trust by doing what I did. I feel like a predator, and Lance doesn’t deserve that.”

If he hadn’t been glaring at the wall, then Keith would have seen Hunk’s face fall with understanding, sucking in his bottom lip between his teeth as he always did when he was processing something. 

“I understand your concern, Keith,” Hunk began carefully, “and I admit that I’m still trying to figure out how to feel about all of this. If you’d, um, let me ask a few questions—“

“Y-yeah,” Keith stammered, eyes wide with fear at the careful neutrality of Hunk’s voice. In their sparring matches Lance hadn’t failed to tell all of them about the time Hunk had been brainwashed by the Baku back on the mermaid planet, and how utterly _terrifying_ the yellow paladin had been when all inhibitions were removed and he was out for blood. The recent incident in the mall came to mind as well, and Keith was sure that Hunk would skin him alive if he found him guilty of hurting Lance. 

“Did you force yourself into his space?”

Keith shook his head, feeling the blush creep back into his cheeks as he explained how dropping an f-bomb had pulled Lance over and initiated their flirting and— _other_ things…

“Based on what you’re telling me you both consented to… _whatever_ you did,” Hunk interrupted, trying to settle down his second-hand embarrassment about the ‘I can think of a few things I want to do with my mouth’ detail that he _definitely_ hadn’t needed to hear. “I mean, it’s always better to ask for permission first, but if he kisses you and you kiss him back I don’t see how that’s predatory at all. I’ll ask you this: if Lance had told you to stop or had seemed uncomfortable, would you have stopped?”

“Yes,” Keith replied immediately and genuinely, his gut clenching in guilt as he recalled the haze of lust that had fallen over him, telling him to _take, take, take_. He’d been on the receiving end of an unwanted touch before, back at the Garrison when some slur-hurtling douchebag had grabbed his ass in the locker room (he’d been suspended for two days after cracking a two of the guy’s teeth), and shuddered at the thought of making anyone—especially Lance—even a fraction as uncomfortable and violated as he had felt. He had never really truly hated his Galra half until now, and when he told Hunk as much the yellow paladin had an entirely new expression on his face.

“Have you not been able to control yourself like this before?” Hunk asked, doing his best to dull the edge of suspicion in his voice. 

Keith looked down, squinting as he thought. “I mean, with fighting sometimes, yeah, but never, um, this stuff.”

Hunk furrowed his brow, fishing his communicator out of his pocket to write himself a note. “I’ll look into it later, but when you were with the Blade, did they ever mention any of this Pon Farr stuff?”

“Pon what?”

Hunk shook his head, muttering something about how Pidge would have gotten the reference as he typed the reminder. “Spontaneous and uncontrollable alien sex drive,” he offered by way of explanation, which seemed to confuse Keith even more.

“There’s a _word_ for that?” 

“No, it’s—never mind. But Kolivan and the other Blades never told you about this?”

“No.”

“None of the other Blade members ever had to go on leave to take care of—?”

“ _Eew_ , Hunk, no.”

“Magaea was close by when you started shifting?”

“Yes, but—“

“And you’ve never gone full Galra before?”

“No, Hunk, what are you even—why is this important?” 

And the pit in his stomach flared with dread again, the hair at the back of his neck standing straight up as a shiver of anxiety worked its way down his spine.

“Something is wrong,” he muttered, rubbing his temples in consternation with one hand as his other fist clenched and unclenched. “Everything about Magaea isn’t adding up, and Pidge wasn’t picking up her phone. I—I thought it was because she was pissed at me, but—“

Keith’s eyes widened in understanding as he got to his feet, back arched in an almost feral crouch as Hunk’s words began to marinate in his mind. He only had a few patches of purple left on his neck and collarbone, but the low light of the bathroom had kept his night vision sharp.

“I can still see pretty well in the dark,” Keith said, helping Hunk up to his feet. “I’ll look for Pidge and tell her that something came up. You find Lance and meet me at the elevator in five doboshes.”

He was about to rush out the door when Hunk grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back with a firm tug. Keith looked like he was about to protest, but the look Hunk gave him immediately set his mouth into a thin line. 

“I’m not really sure about anything right now; whether your shift was a spontaneous thing or caused by an outside agent, but it started fading when you got here to the bathroom. Whatever caused you to shift could still be out there,” Hunk warned, “and being close to Magaea could make it worse. I’ll find Pidge—I can track her communicator—and you find Lance. He’s by the elevator already: grab him and get to the hangar as fast as you can.”

“But—“

“Keith, I’m trying _really hard_ not to yell at you right now, _please just grab Lance and get out_. I’ll get Pidge and meet you down there as soon as possible. Have the engine running.”

Hunk fished out his phone, scrolling through the functions to get to the tracker, barely sparing Keith a second glance as he slipped out of the restroom.

\- - - - - - -

Drunk.

There was…really no other way of explaining how he felt right now. Every step required concentration, and the world swirled around him in a pulsing hurricane of light and sound. He was warm, and giddy, and enjoying the way Allura’s hand possessively stroked over the small of his back _far_ more than he should have. Their mission was fading to the back of his mind now, the woman before him far too captivating to consider such serious matters: they were at a _nightclub_ , for quiznak’s sake, why not have some _fun_?

“’Lura,” he slurred, blinking slowly as the strobe lights illuminated the floor in white-contoured forms. “’Lura, le’s dans.”

The disguised Altean raised her eyebrows. “Sorry, but whatever dialect you’re speaking, my universal translator does not recognize it,” she chuckled, shaking her head. 

Shiro grunted, stumbling as a large figure barreled past them, seemingly too occupied with his phone to notice that other people were trying to go about their business. What was his rush for, anyway? Come to think of it, why were _they_ rushing?

“Uh. Loo. Ruh,” he sounded out, giggling to himself at how the words sounded. “Daansuh. Wiff. Me.”

For a moment she looked concerned, her brow furrowing the slightest bit as Shiro slurred and stumbled. He was…really playing his part well, and while they hadn’t planned to use this behavior as a cover, Allura wasn’t about to complain at how he was insistently trying to hold her hands in his, chests brushing lightly as their eyes met between them. When he started to step from side to side, the princess finally understood, and began to sway in tandem with him as she guided them across the dance floor to the bar, doing her best to keep them both coordinated and on-task. 

Out of the corner of her eye Allura could see him unabashedly staring at her, mouth slightly open in awe as his eyes traced the delicate lines of her face. She ducked her head, clearing her throat as a familiar heat painted her red from head to toe, because that look he was giving her was _definitely_ not something that could have done spuriously. 

The stumbling, the slurring, the giggling, the meaningful looks—

What the _ruggle_ was going on?

“Kól,” she insisted, hoping that using Shiro’s undercover name would remind him of their mission, “as much as I’d love to spend the rest of the night cycle here with you, my mother gave me that necklace I misplaced and I’m sure she’ll be _devastated_ if we come back from our honeymoon without it.” 

Shiro blinked, seeming confused as Allura looked at him insistently, drawing in a sharp breath at the intensity of her gaze. 

“Whoss’is Cole?” he asked, squinting a bit as he tilted his head. “Whut necklush?”

Allura felt her stomach drop, back ramrod straight as she squeezed his fist perhaps a bit tighter than she ought have. Shiro—steely and professional as he was—was genuinely confused and disoriented, and during an extremely delicate and important mission no less. For their safety neither of them had taken any food or drink since their arrival at ORYON, but with how they were equipped nothing could keep them from taking up an aerosolized drug. 

But if there was something in the air, why hadn’t she been affected too? Wouldn’t the entire room have been filled with stumbling and disoriented people by now? Could he have been injected with something, or touched—?

The coupon.

Before he knew it Shiro was being dragged off to the photo booth, letting Allura pull him across the floor until she flipped back the curtain and pulled the both of them inside the small receptacle. He practically fell into her lap as he plopped down, rubbing the side of his head as his eyes squeezed shut in pain.

Allura flipped open her communicator and activated their tech cloaking, which would shut off most surveillance tech within a few paces’ radius for a few doboshes (a particularly helpful update courtesy of Pidge). The camera screen in the booth flashed an error, and Allura immediately let her façade drop when Shiro’s confusion didn’t seem to alleviate.

“Shiro, we’re on a mission,” she clarified, answering the unasked question as she placed her hands on his chest, unbuttoning one of the front pockets and yanking the coupon out. Though the light in the booth was low Allura could see that the slip—previously a deep purple in color—was turning a soft lilac, with the majority of the color change originating from two small fingerprints Shiro had made on the card when he’d accepted it from the bouncer about a varga ago. When her fingers came away in alarm, however, no such change occurred, and she didn’t feel any more or less woozy than she had before, so she gathered her resolve and nudged the slip into her beaded clutch for Coran to test later. 

At this point Shiro had practically collapsed forehead-first onto Allura’s shoulder, murmuring something incoherent under his breath as he continued to teeter in his seat: he would have collapsed into a heap outside of the booth had the Altean princess not seized the scruff of his neck and pulled him back into place, keeping his body close to hers with one hand as she tried to summon Coran on the communicator with the other.

“Croc Hunter, come in, Croc Hunter, this is Juniberry, requesting backup on location; Space Dad is incapacitated on account of a suspected poisoning attempt,” she whispered into her earrings, toggling the settings to broadcast across multiple frequencies. The code names that Lance had given all of them had seemed silly at first (‘Croc Hunter’ had been particularly nuanced), but this hadn’t been the first time she’d used them to conceal their identities. “I repeat: Croc Hunter, this is Juniberry, Space Dad is incapacitated. We are requesting extraction immediately.”

But it was no use: Coran was way too far away to intercept the signal, or too engrossed in avoiding detection that whatever faint connection she’d managed to establish would have been ignored. The two of them were here, in the middle of an extremely important mission, with no one but each other for support, and Shiro’s ability to remain focused and coherent was rapidly slipping away from some yet unconfirmed cause. 

“ ‘Lura…”

The black paladin coughed, reaching out into the air for her as he blindly searched in the dim light of the booth, his hand grasping around nothing. Allura swore, holding Shiro’s head between her hands, thumbing at his fluttering eyelids to keep him awake.

“ _Shiro!_ Shiro, wake up, I need you to come back to me—Shiro—S-shi—ro—“ 

She fell limp against the booth’s backrest, limbs flopping uselessly to her sides as an overwhelming exhaustion overcame her. Even her mouth refused to move according to her wishes, hanging open in a silent scream as she fell out of consciousness. 

\- - - - - - -

Pidge hadn’t been difficult to find.

Perhaps it had been a product of not knowing where half of her family had been for the better part of two years, but she always carried her communicator with her, and despite her bitching and moaning about Big Brother had never bothered to disable its tracking function, even on important missions. The frequency was such that only devices with certain hardware that she and Matt had developed on Olkarion could receive and unscramble the signal, though at the cost of having a range that was less than desirable. Thankfully, they were less than a hundred miles apart, so the green blip on Hunk’s screen blinked strong and true, moving this way and that as she presumably paced about an area near the bar.

Despite knowing where Pidge was, Hunk’s visibility in the darkness of this room was still less than ideal, so he turned his screen to full brightness and began to scan it about the crowd of club-goers, holding the device above his head to get better visibility. 

Sure enough, not a meter from the bar, a familiar mop of hair popped into view, only—well, it was rather _close_ to someone else’s head, and that someone had two sets of arms wrapped around Pidge’s back and was—oh. 

_ Well.  _

As if Pidge didn’t hate him enough already for telling her that the girl she liked was lying, now Hunk would have to _interrupt_ her snogging session with said girl.

Hunk needed to go about this situation delicately. Appeal to Pidge’s sensibilities. Scientific method, hypotheses, experiments. 

Taking a deep breath, he dialed her number, exhaling as the tone sounded once, twice, thrice, and from here Hunk could see the familiar light emanating from somewhere around Pidge’s sternum, illuminating her delicate collarbones and the underside of her chin. She barely blinked as it vibrated and flashed, seemingly too enamored with whatever Magaea was doing to realize that this had been the sixth time he’d called her in the last fifteen doboshes. 

He had an in, now: a rare negligence that would have never happened under other circumstances; a reason to arouse her suspicion. 

And Hunk hated himself for seeing the worse in Pidge’s happiness, but he could wallow later. 

So he cleared his throat, steeling his resolve for the withering glare she was sure to give him when she recognized his presence approaching—

And when she looked at him—

Nothing. 

Pidge had seen him—she’d clearly seen him—but was acting as if their quarrel had never occurred. She looked sleepy, and dopey, and so un Pidge-like that a part of Hunk seized up again in fear that she’d been replaced by some impostor; some _anti-Pidge_ , only this time Allura wasn’t here to clear up a simple misunderstanding.

But then, to his relief, she blinked slowly, raising the hand that had been resting on Magaea’s shoulder in greeting, the corners of her mouth curled up in a small smile. 

“Hey, Hunk,” she slurred, laughing softly at her friend’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Where’ya been? I missed you.”

He must have visibly reacted to her unanticipated positivity, because she cocked her head to the side as a sound of surprise left his throat, humming as her addled mind processed his tone. 

“Pidge, I’ve called you several times in the past quarter varga, and we need to go because we have places to go and things to do in the morning,” he replied urgently, trying his best to give her a look that accurately conveyed their need for haste. 

“I’m…busyyy.”

“I can see that,” Hunk snarked, wrinkling his nose in annoyance as Magaea completely ignored their conversation in favor of nuzzling Pidge’s cheek. “But you _know_ we have a curfew, and that Al—Space Mom will have our heads if we don’t return on time.”

“Fuck Allura, I don’t care.”

And, _wow_ , that had more bite to it than he’d expected. 

“Pidge—“

“Wait, _Princess_ Allura?” Magaea interjected, and Hunk felt his stomach drop. 

Even in her addled state, Pidge seemed to sense that she’d let something slip that she probably shouldn’t have, her back tensing ramrod straight as Magaea visibly connected the dots in her head.

Her gaze flicked left and right, lips pursed as Hunk and Pidge’s lack of denial told her all that she needed to know. Magaea bit her lip, seeming to think on it for a moment, before taking a deep breath and mouthing something as subtly as she could.

_ Say no. _

Hunk caught on before Pidge did.

“She’s no princess, but she certainly acts like one sometimes,” Hunk chuckled, waving emphatically. “Our captain works us to the bone, and thinks that because she and the leader of the Coalition have the same that she can boss us around.”

“Fair enough,” Magaea replied, seeming relieved that he’d understood. “Well, if you have a curfew, I don’t want the both of you getting in trouble. Don’t want to get left behind during shore leave, what a disaster that would be—“

She looked at Pidge, still held securely in her arms, with an expression that was almost pained before kissing her on the forehead one final time, and with a final rub to her forearms released her to Hunk. Confused and disoriented, Pidge curled in on herself, eyes wide and watery as Hunk pulled her under his arm, wriggling as if to escape and return to the nest of Magaea’s embrace, but giving up easily as the wall of his arms kept her close, his whispered reassurances damming her tears.

When the yellow paladin looked up a moment later, Magaea was gone.

 

\- - - - - - -

 

When Allura came to, she felt as if all of the bones in her body had been sucked out, pulverized, and put back in. Her head throbbed and ached, her mouth was so dry that her tongue had stuck to the bottom of her mouth, and when she tried to move her body screamed in protest, electricity needling along the nerves after their unanticipated dormancy. 

She was bound about the hands and feet, the faint purple glow of the cuffs pulsing in response as she rolled her body into a sitting position, blinking rapidly to clear the haze in her mind and center herself, when a lock of silvery white hair fell before her eyes. 

It hurt to jolt in realization, and hurt even more to turn her head and glance at her hands, noticing that they too had returned to their original color, and even though she didn’t have a mirror or her wits about her Allura knew that she’d returned to her natural height as well. 

Whatever had been done to her, it had forced out of her biological disguise, and she suspected that the cuffs were slowly sucking away her quintessence.

And Shiro—

Where was Shiro?

“Brilliant, aren’t they? Reinforced luxite with Balmera crystal cores.”

The primal part of Allura’s brain flared in alarm at the sound of the voice, chilling her down to the bone as it seemed to echo around her from all directions. 

“Who’s there?” she snarled, ears flattening against her skull as it chuckled in amusement. “Where is Shiro? Show yourself!”

“Oh, Allura,” they tsked, tongue clicking against the roof of their mouth, “You were always so _demanding_. Just like your father.”

A hooded figure flashed into view, clad in the robes of a Galra druid, and when Allura blinked it had moved closer, the chuckling becoming more cacophonous even as the figure’s lips did not move. She could smell it now: a raw, putrid stench of death, with an unmistakable tang of metal and grit that made her teeth tingle and grate in discomfort. It was all around her now, curling into her ears and nostrils and eyes, and she gagged in disgust at it all, taking small breaths as to avoid being completely overwhelmed by it. 

“ _Where. Is. Shiro_?” she choked out again, willing her teeth to sharpen to make her grimace seem more intimidating, but a searing pain made her cry out before she could complete the transformation, and now her jaw hung unevenly with one of her canines far larger than the other, and she couldn’t build up the strength to change it back. 

“If you must know, he’s more or less in the same situation as you are,” the voice replied, as if they were a professor with a quirky anecdote at a dinner party. 

“If you touch him—“

“You’ll what, dear princess?”

Allura growled, baring her single elongated canine. “I will take particular pleasure in tearing you limb from limb.”

She clenched her fists, willing her arms and wrists to assume the stature of a Balmeran in an attempt to break free of the cuffs, but they glowed in protest and she screamed as the interrupted transformation forced her bones back into their natural shape, her left wrist now clawed, covered in patches of rough exoskeleton, and bent at an odd angle. The voice sighed in exasperation as she whimpered in pain, staring in horror down at her mutilated hand.

“Unless you want to look like one of Haggar’s monstrosities, I would stop trying to shift if I were you,” it remarked, this time sounding as if it were inches away from her ear. Allura lifted her head to butt her assailant, but met nothing. “Which would be such a shame: I have many plans for you and Champi—.”

“Don’t you _DARE_ call him that,” she spat, squirming in her restraints. By now her hair had completely spilled out of her bun and cascaded down into her eyes, and cursed herself for not being able to transform it to become any shorter. 

The voice made a noise of interest, seeming to circle around Allura in inspection. 

“Quite attached to him, aren’t you? I suppose your ruse wasn’t entirely spurious, after all.”

Allura made no motion to confirm or deny the statement, but held her breath as a bit of motion passed in her peripheral vision, a soft breeze indicating that they had just passed by her. 

“I must say: the engagement stunt you pulled with the Qijitii was quite impressive, but we both know that your father would have _never_ approved of your union with such a damaged, simpering being.”

“You know _nothing_ of them!” she cried, gritting her teeth as best she could given the enlarged canine. “Alfor was a good man, as is Shiro. They don’t stalk in the dark under the cover of magic like a _coward_.” 

The chuckle became an all-out laugh, echoing as if projected into an endless corridor, rattling her bones. 

“Oh, my dear princess, cowardice is in your blood, and I knew it the moment your father broke his oath to me.”

The figure was before her now, tangible and whole; more than an apparition, and the smell was even stronger now, and if possible even more foul, and Allura coughed and choked in disgust. 

If this— _creature_ had interacted with Alfor as they’d claimed, then they had to be more than ten thousand feebs old, and based on their smell she didn’t doubt it. 

“My father was an honorable man, but unfortunately left many debts unpaid when he was slain by Zarkon,” she said evenly, chin held high. “I might have offered to see that debt repaid had you sought me out in a more cordial manner, but seeing as you felt entitled to harming both myself and my paladin to get what you wanted, I cannot imagine that Alfor would have ever owed a favor to the likes of you.”

The figure’s footsteps hardly made a sound as they loomed closer, almost gliding across the gritty, grimy floor of the cell. Underneath the hood Allura thought she saw a humanoid face, with Druid facial markings flanking their chin before jutting out towards the ears and cascading down the neck, seeming almost painted onto the taut, near-translucent flesh.

They stooped down until they were at eye level with her, and Allura could hear the faint whir of artificial organs forcing blood and bile to and fro inside of them, the light of one of the monitors visible through the thin skin in their neck. She thought she would pass out from the smell until the cacophony of asynchronous whirrs and clicks throbbed in the base of her skull, and with little warning felt the cake Hunk had made for Pidge’s birthday evacuate her stomach and splatter onto the floor. 

After she’d coughed and cleared her throat as best she could, Allura looked up defiantly, and saw that both of her captor’s eyes were artificial, and hardly altered with consideration to cosmetics: the skin around the sockets was heavily scarred and mottled, as if the eyes had been replaced dozens of times, but their eyes hardly seemed to matter in comparison to the two glowing v-shaped marks beneath them.

It appeared that she, Coran, and Haggar hadn’t been the only extant Alteans to escape ten thousand pheebs ago. 

\- - - - - - -

Lance was twiddling his thumbs by the elevator, playing an Altean version of Tetris on his communicator when a shadowy figure hurled itself out of the mass of bodies and slammed into the call button. The blue paladin yelped, clutching his chest as he recovered from the shock.

“Dude, what’s the hurry? Scared the living crap out of me…”

A warm, calloused hand was suddenly clasped around his, and before Lance knew it he was being yanked like a ragdoll toward the opening doors, protesting loudly the whole way. 

“Hey! I don’t know who you think you are, but— _Keith_?”

The elevator door had shut, and the red paladin had a finger each on the ground floor and close door buttons, blinking blearily as the overhead light blinked on.

“What are you—“

“We need to leave,” Keith interjected, foot tapping impatiently as the cart descended. “Hunk and Pidge are gonna meet us in the hangar. I’ll explain later, but for now just stay low and don’t pretend like anything’s wrong.”

Lance squinted incredulously, mouth slightly open as he processed the words, then took out his phone and typed a quick message, cupping his hand around the screen so that only Keith could read it.

**_ What r we gonna say if someone stops us and asks us where we’re going without our friends?  _ **

Keith huffed, motioning to grab the phone, and to his surprise Lance let him take it. He fumbled with the keyboard, not used to the smaller buttons, but managed to type out a reply:

**_ Idk what do u think of when u see 2 ppl leaving a club early w/o their friends _ **

Lance took the phone back and read over the reply, then seemed to do a double take as the words sank in. 

“What are you giggling about?” Keith muttered, cocking his head as Lance scrolled through his emoji library with a particularly conniving look on his face. Seeming satisfied, Lance showed him the screen, his arm shaking with poorly muffled laughter as Keith squinted to read it:

 

“Oh my _god_ , Lance—“

The blue paladin snorted, only a little self-conscious of his ugly sounding laugh as Keith bonked his head against the wall of the elevator. 

“Say what you want, Keithy boy, but it’s worked before,” Lance quipped, trying to hide his blush behind the screen. He was still kind of in disbelief about the stranger he’d found himself with tonight, and how mind-blowing those four and a half doboshes had been. It was a shame that the guy hadn’t stuck around to give Lance his number, because _goddamn_ if he wasn’t craving those lips again.

Before he could dwell on it further, though, the elevator door had opened, and the familiar odor of rocket fuel and humid sewers smacked them in the face, pulling Lance out of the pleasant memory. 

“Come on,” Keith urged, tugging on Lance’s sleeve as he set off at a run towards the lot, only for the both of them to be met by a large, particularly stout valet.

Keith dug the ticket stub out of his pocket and handed it over, holding his breath as the valet looked it over.

“Weren’t there four of you?” they asked, looking between the two paladins.

Before Keith knew it Lance’s hand had sneaked around his waist, pulling them together at the hip as his fingers teased at the hem of his shirt. He nuzzled into the red paladin’s neck, chuckling lowly as he flashed the valet a smirk.

“We’ll only be a few doboshes, right Keith?” he cooed, wiggling his eyebrows for emphasis. “That is, if you last that long.”

Keith nearly choked on his own spit as the valet looked at the both of them with more than mild discomfort, and forked over the keys with little fanfare. “Just—keep it quiet, and don’t rock the vehicle: the guy to your left just got his ship waxed, and it doesn’t need any scratches.”

They didn’t stick around for a response, returning to the kiosk to fish out what looked like a crossword puzzle, and Keith and Lance were off, and before long the redness on their faces seemed little more than a product of exertion rather than embarrassment. 

\- - - - - - -

It had taken Hunk more than a few doboshes to get Pidge to the elevator, but he’d finally guided her inside and pushed the button to take them to the hangar, holding the green paladin against him with one arm as he braced himself on the wall with the other. Whatever she’d been drugged with had made her limp and pliant, and at one point Hunk had simply picked her up to take her the rest of the way across the dance floor, hoping that no one would think he was a total creep as he guided the both of them to safety. 

For the life of him, Hunk couldn’t even begin to piece together what had happened tonight: he’d been entirely convinced that Magaea was setting them all up for something, then the next moment she’d known who they all were and covered for them as they’d made their escape. Pidge had been _furious_ at him, and now she was hugging his arm and squishing her cheek against his bicep, her face pinched in consternation. Hunk could tell that she was thinking about Magaea, and felt a pang of guilt at having left so abruptly. Shouldn’t he have tried to figure out what was going on, or at least tried to help her? 

The yellow paladin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he mentally went over his options. Pidge would obviously have to go with Keith and Lance; there was no way she’d be able to be helpful in this state. He could go with the rest of them, regroup with Coran, Allura, and Shiro, and attempt an intelligence gathering mission with everyone in the loop, but there was no telling whether someone had been watching their exchange and wouldn’t do horrible things to Magaea to get her to talk. He was just beginning to notice them now, but there were cameras _everywhere_ , and he was sure that someone would be able to find them if they happened to be looking (he’d already ‘accidentally’ bumped into the one on the elevator so that it was aimed at the ceiling instead of the floor, but there was no telling how long it would take surveillance to catch on). There were probably microphones, too, so he had to watch what he said. 

Pidge groaned, burying her head deeper into his sleeve as the elevator made its way down ever so slowly. She was still completely out of it, and Hunk had no idea why. Fearing long-term effects, he’d already taken an air sample for a gas chromatograph (he’d intended the vials to hold food samples, and always brought them to new places), and was sure the healing pod would detect anything lingering in her blood, but he was still anxious about her actually making it to the pod before things got worse.

“Pidge, talk to me: how are you feeling right now?”

“Mnngh.”

“Can you breathe all right?”

“Hmm.”

Hunk held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Pidge squinted, leaning in her head so close that her nose brushed his palm. 

“I dunno, five?”

Right, she didn’t have her glasses on.

“What’s the square root of 500?”

“Something between 22 and 23…why, is it important?”

“No, it’s fine. Do you feel like you could run a mile right now?”

“Do _you_ feel like you could run a mile right now?” she snarked back, chuckling into his arm. “Also, the answer is no, and will always be no.”

“Do you feel like you could sleep for a mile right now?”

“I could sleep for the square root of 500 miles.”

Hunk yawned. “And then you would sleep the square root of 500 more?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“What do you want more than anything right now?”

“A Peanut Buster from Dairy Queen. You?”

“Pineapple on pizza.”

“You animal.”

The elevator rattled as it continued to descend, accelerating and decelerating in punctuated bursts as they stopped on a few floors on the way down. They were about two thirds of the way when Hunk took a deep breath and cleared his throat.

“Hey, Pidge?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry. About earlier, I mean. I’m super paranoid, and I think I always will be, but it’s not because I don’t trust you or your judgment.”

She flinched just enough to alert Hunk to slacken his posture a little bit, and as the muscles in his arm relaxed her cheek pressed into it even more, her face warm enough to feel through his jacket.

“You’re important to me, Pidge, and you always have my back. I just want to make sure that I always have yours, too, even if I’m not always right and end up making a fool of myself. I’d rather you be safe and hate me forever than to not say anything and have something horrible happen to you because I didn’t speak up.”

And Pidge—bless her soul—quietly began to weep, the crucible of emotions swirling about in her head and finally finding release in her tears. There were no sobs or hiccups, only the staccato rise and fall of Pidge’s ribcage and the humidity caused by her tears quickly soaked through the fabric of Hunk’s sleeve, but he hardly cared.

“When we get back to the castle,” he began, moving to embrace her and rub her back as she cried, “what’s the first thing you want to do after we get you checked out in the healing pod?”

“G-get another piece of the cake you made me,” she sniffed, clinging tighter to his jacket. “And call Matt and brag about h-how good it is while I eat it in front of him.”

“And what about tomorrow morning, if you feel up to doing anything?”

“Swim w-with Lance. Hunk?”

“Hm?”

She caught herself just before she asked ‘do you think I’m ugly:’ it was far too conceited, and no matter what he actually thought, his answer would always be a resounding ‘no.’ It didn’t make any sense to embarrass herself further for such trivialities, and wasn’t sure why she cared so damn much about it in the first place. 

“I forgive you,” she found herself mumbling, and she meant it.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know, and I’m still mad at you, but I forgive you.”

Hunk bit his lip, pressing her even closer and tighter to him than before. 

“I’ll make it up to you,” he promised, just as the elevator finally landed on the ground floor. Hunk gave her a final squeeze before ushering the both of them out to the hangar, and just as he’d requested their pod was whirring quietly on standby just a few meters away from the entrance. 

Keith and Lance were strangely quiet when Hunk helped Pidge into her seat, hardly acknowledging them from the front as they got settled. Once he was sure she was strapped in properly Hunk reached for his own seatbelt, tugging it over his lap.

“Hunk? Waiting on you, buddy,” Lance warned, and the yellow paladin suddenly realized that he’d failed to buckle himself in. He looked down at his hands, and at Pidge’s form slumped in the passenger seat beside him, her eyes half-lidded and vacant as she stared at her lap.

He couldn’t just leave Magaea there. 

They were the defenders of the universe, goddammit, and Magaea had risked her own neck to warn them all. It was his fault that all of this had happened, anyway: if he hadn’t asked so many questions, or been so critical—

“Hunk, what are you doing? We need to go, you said it was urgent!”

But to Keith’s dismay Hunk was already undoing his seatbelt and maneuvering his way out of the pod, making sure that Lance saw his face as he spoke.

“Something’s not right. I think Magaea’s in trouble.”

“I thought you were convinced that she was trying to kill us!” Keith retorted, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel. 

Hunk was completely out the hatch now, and making no move to reverse his trajectory. “Get back to the castle and get Pidge in a pod. Keep your comms open, and meet me back here in a varga.”

“Who died and made you black paladin?” Lance retorted, gesticulating wildly with his hands, but Hunk was already running back towards the lift, and ticks later he was out of eye and earshot entirely. 

Lance huffed, rubbing his temples. “Why does this sort of thing always happen to us?”

Keith didn’t look much happier as he guided the pod into drive and zoomed into the hangar’s airlock behind a larger vessel, engaging the thrusters rather recklessly as soon as they were launched out into space. 

“I don’t know, but if Coran catches us snooping around we’re going to have to come up with a plausible reason for Pidge being in the pod,” he muttered, checking the rearview mirror to make sure the green paladin was still lucid. She had turned around in her seat, neck craned to peer back at the asteroid as it became smaller and smaller in the distance, and Keith had the sinking feeling that this all was about to become a lot worse.

His anxieties were confirmed when, upon reaching the coordinates where the Castle of Lions had been last, he didn’t feel the familiar pull and thrum of the red lion, and judging by the look on Lance’s face he couldn’t sense Blue either.

The castle was gone.

 


	28. Year 3 (part 9)

** Year 3 (part 9) **

WARNINGS: Panic attack, mentions of torture and non-consensual body modification (with respect to Shiro’s arm and how he got it), vomiting

\- - - - - - -

Allura’s eyes grew wide as the figure leaned in closer, their eye scales glowing a sickly shade of green as they squinted in scrutiny before her. She—she _knew_ this face, marred and corrupted by time though it was, and the color of their markings, atypical among Alteans, was a dead giveaway. 

But—it _couldn’t_ be…

“ _Rolan_?”

The figure’s eyebrows raised an almost imperceptible amount, but the tell had been more than enough, and if she could have Allura would have covered her mouth with her hands to muffle the gasp that tumbled past her lips. She thought she’d never see him again, not after—

“Rolan is dead,” they growled, and in a tick they had dematerialized and appeared again behind her, robes billowing with the movement. “The Druids call me Rho now.”

…

_ “Based on our findings, the individual responsible for manufacturing the bio-tech weaponry that nearly detonated Naxzela is known as Rho,” said Kolivan, his voice more gravelly than usual over the encrypted video correspondence. “They’ve been within the witch Haggar’s circle for decapheebs, and we suspect that they were also responsible for engineering the debilitating plague that hit Sajar several pheebs ago.” _

__

_ “And now they’re an independent agent?” Shiro asked, fingers hovering over his data pad. _

__

_ “Yes, as of Zarkon’s death. Rho seems to be motivated by finances rather than ideology, and was directly involved in many unrelated coup attempts after Lotor assumed the throne, many of which directly interfered with one another.” _

__

_ “Does anyone know where Rho came from, or what he’s accumulating funds for?” Allura questioned, resting her chin on her folded hands.  _

__

_ “Unfortunately, his motives have been difficult to pinpoint: he seems to only procure what he needs to carry out the client’s wishes,” said Kouros, one of the Blades to Kolivan’s left. “Prior to Zarkon’s death he was assumed to be loyal to the Galra Empire. As of where he came from, one of our operatives reported that he smelled Galra, but was not entirely sure. She was killed before she could finish the transmission.” _

__

_ Shiro tightened his fist. “How long ago was that?” _

__

_ “Approximately 65 decapheebs.” _

__

_ Allura inhaled sharply, glancing over to Shiro to see that he was equally concerned. Long-lived species weren’t particularly uncommon, but the combination of Rho’s extended time period of activity as well as his association with Haggar was beginning to suggest something that neither of them had anticipated. _

__

_ “We might have to assume that Honerva and Zarkon weren’t the only ones to have been corrupted and subsequently sustained by large amounts of quintessence.” _

__

…

Allura choked on a sob as she squeezed her eyes shut, cursing the universe for its constant reminders of what she had lost. As a constant presence in the Altean court, Rolan had been her friend—one of her oldest friends, if she was being honest—and seeing him like this had inflicted an irreparable wound upon her: how his flesh barely clung to his bones; how his eyes scanned rather than saw; how his once brilliant smile had been reduced to tattered bits of gum and enamel. He looked as if he had died one hundred times over, only to be sewn together with some spare parts and brought back like some horrific Ro-beast. Even now, as he taunted and threatened her, she wished a peaceful death upon him, for his body was so mutilated that it must have been _agony_ to simply even exist. 

“Rolan—“

“My name is _not_ Rolan,” he muttered icily, unleashing another wave of stench as he hovered closer. 

__

“Whatever promise my father may have made, it was to Rolan,” Allura insisted, voice wavering with emotion, “Now, state your intent and do what you will with me, or leave.”

The figure turned its head beneath the cloak, cocking to the side in interest. “Straight to the point as always…but no. I think I’ll let you squirm for a bit: after all, it’s been ten thousand decapheebs: what’s a few more ticks to me? Besides, your companion should be waking up right about now…”

Allura thrashed her limbs in an attempt to break free, but the cuffs only sapped more of her strength and caused her broken wrist to throb even harder. She nearly passed out from the pain, falling onto her side and cheek-first into the cold metal flooring below, wholly expecting Rolan’s figure to disappear to do Ancients-knew-what to Shiro—

But he simply flicked his wrist, and within a few ticks a door had appeared in the wall and hissed open, revealing an identical hidden half to the room. The princess struggled to pull herself up into a sitting position again, but once she’d managed to stand up to a crouch and whip the hair out of her eyes, she saw Shiro collapsed in a heap just a few meters past the threshold, bound just as she was and near motionless on the stone-cold floor. 

_ “SHIRO!” _

She made to move toward him, momentarily forgetting that her arms and legs were still bound together, and fell painfully on her shoulder and hip on her way down, crying out as her injured wrist smacked onto the floor. She rolled onto her back and struggled to lift her shoulders, resolving to move her body by pushing it head-first towards Shiro with her feet, the delicate dress tearing and pulling at the floor as she made her way to her paladin. She was surprised that there was no barrier to meet her when she crossed the threshold between the two rooms, and beyond bewildered when she was allowed to crawl all the way up to him and nudge him with her head. The pressure to his stomach drew out a sharp breath, and before Allura knew it Shiro’s eyes were wide open and practically shining with fear as he took in his surroundings, barely noticing Allura as she shifted herself to be next to him. 

He stared down at his bound hands and feet, mumbling something unintelligible under his breath as his entire body began to shiver and rock, eyes opening wide and squeezing shut as he tried with all his might to activate his Galra arm, but before Allura could warn him about the cuffs he screamed out in pain as the heat he’d directed into the contraption was thrown right back at him, searing the skin of his wrist and ankles. 

“Don’t try to do anything with your arm!” Allura cried, hoping that her words would get to him over the sounds of his mumbling and whimpering. “The cuffs will only sap our energy and use it against us.”

He lifted his head and looked at her wildly, as if she’d just appeared out of nowhere, then back down to his bound wrists, then to the shackles on her own arms, a wordless question hovering between them.

Almost as if in answer, Rho materialized above them, eyes sinisterly glowing under the shade of the hood, and Shiro’s entire body seized in terror as a memory from his first imprisonment bubbled unbidden to the surface.

“Hello again, Champion.” 

\- - - - - - -

The valet looked rather perplexed as Hunk practically flew down the tarmac, arms pumping with effort as he dove for the button to summon the elevator again. Within ticks it had opened, and Hunk had all but carried the three noodle-shaped aliens out before climbing in himself and ascending to the Blackout Room, catching his breath as best he could in the small, overheated space. He’d sweat entirely though his shirt now, and knew that Coran would be giving him a right scolding about perspiring so profusely onto an “irreplaceable” Altean garment, but the only thing he could focus on at the moment was the painstakingly slow ascent: it seemed that even the most cutting edge of space elevator technology was determined to test its users’ patience. 

And, patient as he was, Hunk didn’t have time to wait around when the doors opened up about half of the way to the Blackout Room and half a dozen blitzed aliens crowded their way in: with a huff, the yellow paladin muscled his way out and made for the stairwell, skipping every other step as the adrenaline propelled him up, up, up—

And then all was dark. He was in the Blackout Room again, just a few feet away from the bathroom where he and Keith had been talking not fifteen doboshes before, only allowing himself to catch his breath for a moment before he pulled out his communicator, ignoring three recently missed messages from Lance as he engaged the flashlight function and began to comb the crowd for Magaea. 

The floor wasn’t _impossibly_ large—perhaps 150 meters squared—but the darkness and the density of the roiling sea of people made the space seem endless. That—compounded with the fact that Magaea probably didn’t want to be found at all—tightened the knot that had already formed in his stomach when the night was far younger, and with each passing moment he doubted more and more that he would find who he sought. 

But then—miraculously—the reflective glow of a familiar pair of yellow-green eyes caught his own from across the room, and she was upon him faster than he thought humanly possible, tugging his sleeve until he followed her into the stairwell, flinching when she rounded upon him with a withering glare. 

“What are you _doing_ here?” she hissed, eyes flitting back and forth as she leaned in close, pinning his shoulder against the wall with two of her clawed hands. “You and the others need to leave!”

Hunk gaped, requiring considerable effort to regain control of his mouth. His mind had flashed back to Shay and her hopeless eyes and tattered clothes, bound and gagged and helpless because of his interference, and a long-forgotten guilt bloomed in his chest. 

“I—I couldn’t just leave you here.”

A fraction of the ferocity left the half-Unilu’s eyes, but her grip on him didn’t slacken. 

“You can, and you will,” she insisted, glancing to and fro again before dragging Hunk down the stairs. “You and Pidge and the others need to leave this place and never return.”

Hunk practically flew down the stairs behind her, doing his best not to trip. “But why? Magaea, whatever’s going on we can help you! Pidge cares about you, and—“

She turned around again, halting their descent, and her glare terrified Hunk into silence. 

“Listen to me: there is an ancient, unspeakable evil here. If you and the others do not leave, then the Galra Empire loyalists will be the least of your worries.”

The yellow paladin shivered at her tone, hardly regaining control of his legs before she was dragging him down the stairs again, but as they reached the relatively flat entrance of the next floor down Hunk dug his heel into the ground and gripped the side rail, gaining enough leverage to sit down on the ground and make it even harder for Magaea to drag him.

“Hunk, I _swear_ to ruggling—“

“I am _not_ leaving you here!” Hunk interrupted, his lip curled into a snarl as he pulled back insistently on Magaea’s arm, conveying to her that he was beyond being polite now. “I don’t know how much you know about us, but it is literally our _job_ to deal with stuff like this, and whether you like it or not we will be back to do what we can to help you.”

The half-Unilu’s frown deepened, staring holes into the floor as she bit her lip, but her hand remained clutched around Hunk’s sleeve, hardly daring to loosen. He caught her gaze, tenacity palpable as his grip on the rail remained steadfast, baring his teeth just enough to convey that he meant business. It was a trick he’d noticed Allura using with the Blade members to establish dominance, and though he lacked the elongated canines to complete the display Magaea seemed to understand the gesture well enough. She huffed, breaking their eye contact to stare at the seamless silver bangle on her wrist, allowing the attached fist to loosen little by little until Hunk was released. 

“I don’t deserve to be helped,” she murmured, rubbing at the skin around the bracelet as if resigned to the fact. “I was selfish, and now all of you are in danger.”

Hunk gently clasped her hand in his own, giving it a reassuring squeeze as he sought her eyes again. 

“You helped us when it mattered, Magaea,” he said sincerely, “but even if you hadn’t that wouldn’t make you unworthy of saving. When people have a lot to lose, they don’t always change for the better, and over time I’ve learned that that doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person.”

She looked at him and nodded in understanding, but before long her gaze had returned to her wrist and she looked as hopeless as ever, curling in on herself as if the walls would close in on them at any moment. 

Hunk’s eyes widened in realization.

He pointed to the contraption on her wrist, then to the wall. After a moment, she understood and nodded, then pointed to her ear and mouth: the bracelet was armed with a microphone and keeping her tethered to this place, and so long as she wore it she would be unable to leave. 

_ Fuck. _

If Pidge were here she’d be able to scan the thing in a hot second and determine _exactly_ how to disarm the software within a few doboshes, but Pidge was unconscious and (hopefully) in a healing pod by now, so he’d have to make do with tinkering with the hardware. It would take a bit longer, and the only thing he had with him that would help was the pocket-sized kit of sampling tools he’d brought with him and, if worse came to worse, his bayard. 

He’d rather not think of _that_ possible solution if he didn’t have to.

Hunk beckoned her forward, scanning the bracelet with his communicator to determine where the seam was, and felt his heart leap into his throat when he finally processed what he saw.

He’d seen this formulation before on the surface of Naxzela. 

If the damn thing was tinkered with, it could explode. 

\- - - - - - -

“Shiro, look at me.”

Allura did her best to maneuver her bound hands to her paladin’s cheek, wincing when his head jerked upward and jostled her broken wrist. He hardly seemed to notice as tears of pain and helpless emerged unbidden from her eyes, hastily blinked away as she continued to whisper small comforts to him, begging him to look away from the horror before them.

Rho shook his head as Shiro thrashed and struggled, seemingly deaf to Allura’s consolation as his breaths became more and more shallow, his right arm pulsing and glowing with energy as it processed his distress, burning straight through the silicone sleeve as if it were never there. The smell of burnt plastic, however better it was than the rotting stench of Rho’s body, made the prisoners wince and curl their toes, and for a moment his eyes shifted into focus and caught the unnatural angle of Allura’s hand, and that seemed to shock Shiro enough to drag him out of one nightmare and hurl him into another.

Allura’s hair had fallen from her bun in every which direction, her dress torn in several places and the crescent-shaped marks on her cheeks duller than he’d ever seen them. She was bound as he was, about the wrists and ankles, the underlying despair in her eyes beginning to smother their usual fire of might and will, and that terrified him more than anything. 

He himself must have looked it, too, because despite her exhaustion and limited mobility the princess reached for him, her knuckles smoothing his sweat-soaked fringe out of his eyes. The thumb of her better hand traced the area on his left cheek just underneath his scar, and for a moment they were far away from here—an otherwise empty corridor at the castle, perhaps—exchanging meaningful looks and tentative touches, on the cusp of stumbling into a terrifying and beautiful uncertainty—

“Stay with me, Shiro, just keep looking at me.”

He leaned his cheek into her palm, the warmth of her touch an oasis of comfort even as the cuffs continued to waste him away, hardly daring to blink as the princess held his gaze. 

“A-allura.”

“Yes, Shiro, it’s me. Keep looking at me, keep listening to my voice. I’m here.”

Rho’s sinister chuckles echoed all around them, and Shiro’s breaths became louder and shallower as a creeping cold seeped into the floor, sapping their bodies of the comforting warmth between them until all they could do was curl into one another and turn their cheeks from the bitter numbness beneath them. Allura’s teeth were beginning to chatter, but her mantra of comforts persisted as best they could, for they were the only tether keeping Shiro from being swallowed entirely by the darkness. 

“It’s a pity, really,” tsked the Druid, and Allura yelped in surprise as she felt icy cold fingers trail the line of her shoulder, “I’d had high hopes for Champion, especially after I worked so hard on him.”

Shiro was audibly sobbing now, curled into himself so tightly that the princess could barely see his face, and she felt her own throat bob in sympathy as she helplessly witnessed his agony, entirely at a loss of what to do. She held no power over what Rolan had become, and knew that she would be kidding herself by attempting to claim as much now. A creature heartless and sadistic enough to do all of those unspeakable things to Shiro couldn’t be reasoned with.

As if to prove her point, Shiro’s cuffs began to glow a dull purple, and within moments he was screaming as the residual energy being emitted by his Galra arm was thrown back into his body as a searing heat, scorching the flesh of his remaining wrist until it blistered and bled. Some of Allura’s hair had caught in his cuffs during their recent reunion, and she felt her scalp pull and stretch as Shiro convulsed in pain beside her, limbs jerking as the residual energy ran its course through him. Mercifully, Shiro finally fell into unconsciousness before his Galra arm could begin charging again, and when he slumped to the floor Allura had feared the worse, barely able to express her relief through her sobs as, against all odds, Shiro’s chest continued to rise and fall.

She nearly vomited again when the smell of burning flesh and hair began to waft from them, but she maneuvered herself closer to him nonetheless, feeling her instincts begin to compel her to shrink down and fit herself into his side. Biting her lip, Allura suppressed the urge to invoke her abilities and focused instead on Shiro’s face, the familiarity of his visage a small comfort in their suffering. 

Rho scoffed, and suddenly his presence was grating behind her ears, his concentrated spite a grating pull just beyond her vision. 

“Not too long ago he might have actually been worthy of you.”

Allura grit her teeth, compelling herself to stifle the tension in her shoulders as his ice-cold breath trailed over the exposed skin. 

“State your intent,” she repeated, this time stronger and more insistent, acknowledging him only with words. There was an unspoken suggestion to leave Shiro out of this—out of _all_ of this—but she would never give Rho the satisfaction of saying it out loud. She wouldn’t beg or plead with him. 

“You said you had unfinished business with my father? Speak it now, then: surely you have at least some civility left in you.”

She growled as the quintessence she’d been excreting as a result of her stress response was funneled into a vibrating hum in the cuffs, holding back a yelp as the energy manifested as a shock that was powerful enough to momentarily knock the air out of her lungs. Even bound and turned onto her side on the cold, metal floor, Allura raised her chin in regal defiance, though her eyes never left Shiro’s troubled face. 

Rho’s tone was bordering on aggressive now, louder and more direct than before.

“ _Civility_? Tell me, Allura: was your father _civil_ when he destroyed my work, stripped me of my titles, and banished me to the hinterlands of the universe without due process?”

The surprise broke her placid facade, and Rho made a noise of interest. 

“He told you that I had died during the fall of Daibazaal, didn’t he? Ah, yes, there’s our answer: so did the research station collapse and crush me to death, or was I hurled into the vacuum of space when the escape pod malfunctioned?”

“He said that one of your projects had made you ill,” Allura replied, the coldness of her tone wavering, “that you and Honerva had been working closely with the Rift, and that it had corrupted you—“

“Alfor exiled me because he was a blind fool that couldn’t even _begin_ to fathom the knowledge and power contained within that Rift,” Rho spat. “He was perfectly content to bend our laws and allow my research to continue when it suited his own interests and needs, but the moment I decided to commit myself to Altea’s greater interests instead of those of a lofty, idealistic king he saw it fit to expel me from his crumbling so-called utopia.”

Allura’s brow furrowed in confusion, which only seemed to anger Rho more. “Were you so sheltered in the bubble of the palace that you did not see Altea falling apart around you? Did droves of citizens not come before you and beg for shelter as the tides and fires took their homes? What of the towns that were buried in ash and smog, or the barren forests and seas?” 

The lush fields of juniberry blooms just beyond the boundaries of the palace flashed in her memory, its leafy, glittering greens swaying softly in a clean and gentle wind. This Altea that Rolan had described—it hardly matched what she remembered. Surely he was mistaken, but she had occasionally heard word of natural disasters occurring about the kingdom. An earthquake here, a flood there, but as terrible as these events could be, not even royalty could command the forces of nature. 

“Alfor himself appointed me to a team of alchemists that was tasked with mitigating Altea’s decay,” he continued. “’Take care of it by any means necessary,’ he’d said, and sent us to Daibazaal’s research base because Honerva’s findings had proven promising. We worked for pheebs and pheebs on discovering a conventional solution—renewable energy, cessation of industry, terraforming—but Altea was too far gone. Nothing would work long-term so long as Altea continued to support twelve billion people, and all of the waste and filth that came with them.”

Allura’s eyes widened as her mind connected the dots: the recent and devastating plague on Sajar, the bio-weaponry capable of destroying entire star systems—

“I initially proposed emigration, but Alfor wouldn’t hear it: he would not bear the disgrace of initiating the largest refugee crisis this side of the universe had ever seen. ‘By any means necessary,’ _hah_! I suppose Alfor believed his pride a heftier price than twelve billion lives, but I’m sure his memory core thought differently when it witnessed all of Altea being obliterated from the starscape. I’m inclined to believe that he might have even agreed with my later proposal to cull a quarter of Altea’s population with a specifically tailored virus had he realized what his ignorance would bring.”

Allura froze, a sickening emptiness opening up in her stomach as her worst fears were confirmed: her father had clearly banished Rolan for a reason, but her _friend_ ; someone she’d grown up with—how could he even fathom such a thing?

“If Altea was so important to you, then why did you join the Galra Empire after Zarkon and his army destroyed it?” she asked, this time unsuccessful in masking the emotion in her voice. “What happened to you, Rolan? What did they do to you to fill you with so much hate?”

His presence was behind her again, the sudden bark of his voice making her jump.

“Hate? Allura, can’t you see? Everything I’ve done—everything I do, now and hereafter—is out of love! I joined Zarkon, not because I believed in what he did, but because I saw it as an opportunity to save other worlds from sharing Altea’s fate. I do what no one else can bring themselves to do: I achieve the greater good at the cost of my conscience, sacrificing the few to save the many. Together Haggar and I developed a method to salvage the quintessence of these losses and use it towards healing the sick, providing for the hungry and destitute—“

“And you believe yourself entitled to make the judgments of who deserves to live and who does not?” Allura barked, shock dissolving into outrage. “And what of the people and planets that fell under Zarkon’s rule? Did your righteous agenda anticipate gladiator rings, generations of enslaved Balmerans, and non-consensual experimentation?”

“I did what I could with what power and authority I had,” Rho spat, the snap of his robes echoing off of the floor. “And Champion was no experiment: I saved his miserable life after that brute Throk had had his way with him, imbuing him with the honor and privilege of a weapon that Zarkon himself might have envied.”

“Are you expecting my _gratitude_?!” the princess bellowed, now sitting up again. “You turned Shiro into a weapon, forced to fight and kill for entertainment!”

“And then you found him and turned him into a warrior who fights and kills under your direction,” Rho countered matter-of-factly, and Allura could almost see him flicking his wrist in dismissal. “It’s all about point of view, Allura: you could call me a murderer and leave it at that, or you could see those deaths as calculated sacrifices made to maximize the survival of the cohort. In any case, what you think of me ultimately does not matter.”

“Then what the _quiznak_ do you want?”

Rho fully manifested before her now, enrobed in the wicked purple of the Druids, and kneeled before her.

“I wish to pledge my service to the Voltron Coalition.”

\- - - - - - -

Pidge opened her eyes.

Stuck together as they were with dried tears and makeup, the endeavor took more effort than she’d anticipated, but when she’d finally managed to separate her eyelids she immediately wished that they could be glued shut again.

The lights in the pod’s cabin blinked and flashed with irritating frequency, their pulses quickly matching those of the headache that now pounded the back of her skull. She groaned in discomfort, rubbing her palms into her eye sockets as she attempted to adjust to the light, almost grateful that her hearing was still stuffy and clouded enough to block out the mechanical whirr of the ship as they hurled through space. 

What she didn’t find herself particularly grateful for, however, was a distinctly soapy odor churning in her sinuses and mouth: Pidge coughed and gagged immediately, startling her two teammates in the driver and passenger seat at the front of the spacecraft.

“Pidge!” Lance cried, eyebrows furrowing when his voice seemed to make her wince in pain. “You’re awake!”

She continued to cough and splutter as the awful scent lingered in her mouth, wiping her lips on the sleeve of the jacket in her lap in a futile attempt to rid herself of it. If they weren’t billions of light years away from Earth, she could have sworn that she was back at the Garrison in line at the mess hall, staring dejectedly out of her tacos that had inevitably been seasoned with—

“Fucking— _cilantro_ ,” she croaked, coughing as she righted her posture in the seat. 

At that Pidge half-expected Hunk to gasp in indignation beside her as she cursed one of his favorite herbs, but when no reply came she managed enough strength to turn her head to the passenger seat beside her—

“Guys, where’s Hunk?”

She looked down into her lap, dread pooling in her stomach as she recognized the tailoring: Hunk had borrowed this suit jacket for the night, but if his jacket was _here_ —

“Lance,” she said more urgently, swallowing down the nausea as it bubbled up within her, “Lance, where is Hunk? Why is he not here? Where are we going?”

“He thought something was up with Magaea and stayed behind,” Keith yelled from the cockpit, his annoyance with the entire situation adding a certain bite to his tone. “We were going to head back to the castle and double back to pick the both of them up after we put you in a pod, but the castle has moved from its scheduled coordinates.”

“So you’re just going to burn through the fuel tank as you conduct a visual search for a ship with advanced cloaking technology?” Pidge scoffed, groaning as she kicked her shoes off, unbuckled her seat belt, and made to shimmy over the center divider of the cockpit until she was sharing the spacious seat with Lance (who seemed less than thrilled at her intrusions). “Why didn’t you just track the communicator signal signature?”

“Oh, I don’t know, because it changes every 5 doboshes to escape enemy detection and none of my tech is directly synced with the encryption!” Lance huffed, throwing his hands in the air. “And why you gotta throw shade at cilantro, dude? Shit’s delicious.” 

Pidge logged into the interface with practiced ease and summoned a map of this particular pocket of the universe, assuring that her scans were well in progress before she dragged herself from the screen to regard Lance.

“It tastes like dirty bath water and expired hand sanitizer. I don’t know where the fuck someone managed to get cilantro in space, but I can taste it and smell it in a _very_ bad way. Also, why didn’t either of you wake me up to do track the signal?”

There was an unspoken air of pity mixed with fear between the red and blue paladins, and Pidge sighed heavily at the notion. “I _swear_ to god—if we lose track of the castle and end up floating around in open space because the both of you were too chicken to wake me up—“

A searing pain suddenly bloomed at Pidge’s temples, eliciting a hiss of pain: it felt as if her head were bound between two boards that were slowly, unrelentingly pushing themselves together, attacking the sides of her skull with such intensity that she saw white spots flash before her eyes.

Not to mention that her stomach wasn’t feeling too hot, either.

“ _Fuck_ —Lance, get me one of those motion sickness bags—“

The blue paladin didn’t need to be told twice: though Hunk’s sensitive stomach had become slightly more tolerant of turbulence in their time as paladins, each of the pods was equipped with precautionary supplies. He’d barely managed to wrestle the bag open before Pidge emptied the contents of her stomach into it, gagging in a way that was even making Keith look a little green around the gills. Lance himself was a little less adept at masking his queasiness, but was thankfully able to keep his food down as he reached under the seat for a water pouch, stuck the straw in, and handed it to Pidge along with a fresh bag to spit in without another word. 

“Thanks,” she muttered, wiping her mouth off on the back of her hand, focusing on regaining control of her breathing before getting back to work on the decryption. The headache seemed to have disappeared as soon as she’d finished her business in the bag: as much as Hunk would protest, Pidge would _definitely_ be testing it when she got back to her lab.

A new kind of anxiety was taking over now: Hunk was in that massive club all alone, looking for someone that could have been on any one of the more than a dozen stories of the complex, if she was still there at all. The details of her most recent moments with Magaea were still fuzzy at best, but a part of her suspected that the half-Galra woman did not want to be found.

And, well, didn’t _that_ sting, even when the logical part of her brain reminded her that Magaea had probably left for the paladins’ safety: it figures that as soon as she met someone halfway decent who thought of her romantically that they’d whisk themselves away.

Keith seemed to catch on when Pidge’s fingers stalled on the keyboard too long, nudging her with his elbow and giving her a meaningful look.

“I’ll mope about my personal shit later,” she quipped, allowing herself to relax back into the seat when the coordinates finally began decoding on the dashboard. “Were there any updates from Hunk while you two let me take a nap?”

“He’s been out of range for fifteen doboshes,” said Keith, inputting the new coordinates to determine their flight pattern.

“And you just let him go _alone?!”_

__

“We didn’t have a choice, the guy jumped out of his seat and _onto the tarmac_ before we could do anything!” Lance exclaimed, seeming as distraught about the turn of events as Pidge was. “Whatever you told him in that elevator must have really swayed him.”

Another swirl of guilt settled in Pidge’s stomach, but she couldn’t focus on that right now, because the castle’s coordinates were leading them to—

“Another asteroid?” Keith muttered, drawing the other two paladins’ gazes up to the dashboard. It was no wonder they’d been unsuccessful in finding the castle: it had been hiding in the shadow of a crater on a particularly large asteroid somewhat close to the one that hosted ORYON, but what reason was there to hide in this part of the star system? The area had never been annexed into the Galra Empire even at its peak, given its lack of life-sustaining planets and inconvenient location: what value would this place have to what remained of the Galra Empire now? 

As a small fleet of cruisers—scouts, by the look of them—circled the asteroid in tight formation, Pidge was suddenly very glad that Keith had been paranoid enough to activate their vessel’s cloaking tech.

“Who the hell is that?” Keith hissed, his eyes flicking to Lance’s side of the screen as he analyzed and enhanced some of the footage the pod had just taken: sure enough, the spacecrafts may have been somewhat Galra in design, but their shape and color betrayed yet unknown origins. Furthermore, their flight formations and scouting patterns couldn’t have been more different from those standardized by the Galra Army’s flight division. When the red paladin said as much, his comrades’ expressions continued to mirror his own confusion.

“Maybe we should try opening up a channel of communication with whoever’s at the helm of the castle,” Lance suggested. “Pidge can use the encrypted channel without giving away the castle’s location, right?”

Of course, Pidge was already at it before Lance could even finish his sentence, and within moments Coran’s distressed face had appeared on the screen, his nose far too close to the camera to get a good view of the rest of the bridge.

“Paladins!” he exclaimed, throwing his head back in relief when they all squished into the view, showing off the insides of his nostrils in Altean high-def as he did so. “Thank the Ancients—where have you all been? Where’s Hunk? I summoned you half a varga ago when Shiro and Allura sent out a distress signal!”

Pidge felt her blood run cold.

“Why would Shiro and Allura be in distress?!” Lance interjected, his voice cracking with hysteria. “I thought all you old people went to bed early!”

Coran pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing deeply as he collected his thoughts. From what the paladins could see he was far from his typical demeanor: his clothes hardly ever showed a wrinkle out of place, a permanent smile stretching his cheeks, but now more than ever the Altean’s age and wear was clear. 

“There was a mission.”

Keith looked like he was about to explode in anger, his fists nearly denting the metal of the steering wheel. 

“And you thought it would be easier to do this mission without involving us?” he spat icily, glaring up at the camera. 

“It was not my choice to make, and before you are so quick to judge me on keeping certain things secret you should reflect on your own choices and actions tonight,” Coran replied, rather terrifying in his conviction given how agreeable he usually was. “In any case that hardly matters now: I fear that Shiro and the princess have been compromised and now require rescue. You can inquire about their decision to keep this matter from all of you when you retrieve them from that awful night club—“

“Shiro and Allura are at _ORYON_?!” Lance interjected, pulling at his scalp as Pidge began setting a course for the asteroid again. “All that stuff that Hunk was worried about—“

Coran paled. “Wait a tick, did you— _is that where Hunk is_? You lot need to get there now and extract him _immediately_ : Allura’s last transmission indicated that Shiro had been incapacitated by some sort of poison that seems to only affect humans—”

As Lance began to explain that they’d all been at the club and not been poisoned, Pidge glanced to the back of the passenger cabin, the used motion sickness bags laying forgotten on the floor. 

As far as she’d known, all of the paladins had eaten and drank the same things: even the drinks that Magaea had purchased in the casino section of the club had been sampled by everyone in the group. If the poison had been airborne, then why hadn’t they all become sick? What did she and Shiro have that Allura, Hunk, Keith, and Lance did not? Could the poison have been transmitted through light or radiation and those with fairer skin were more susceptible? Unlikely, because there were other aliens in the club with similarly fair skin that weren’t affected, and Keith was not much darker than she was. Had it been a specific room or location? No one could tell what gender or sex designations defined the restrooms (or even if that’s _how_ they were designated), and that was the only place she’d been that the others hadn’t, so that was out. 

Perhaps the toxin was gene-specific? But surely she and Shiro shared more than one of more than 30,000 human genes: there could be thousands of possibilities! Perhaps if she went over her symptoms: headache, vomiting, amnesia, dizziness, weird nasty cilantro aftertaste—

_ “Why you gotta throw shade at cilantro, dude? Shit’s delicious.” _

“Keith, do you and Shiro like cilantro?”

Even though Coran had no idea what cilantro was, he looked at Pidge with similar degrees of incredulity and perplexity as Keith and Lance did. 

“It’s important, I promise: do you like cilantro? Does Shiro like cilantro?”

The red paladin shrugged. “It’s…okay, I guess? Shiro can’t stand it, though: he says it tastes like soap. Why?”

Pidge racked her brain, trying her best to remember 7th grade biology: there was some gene that made cilantro taste shitty to some people, but it wasn’t a gene that affects taste as much as it affects smell. She remembered that it was a genetic trait, because her entire immediate family _hated_ cilantro—

“I think that the poison only affects people with a genetic predisposition to disliking cilantro,” Pidge mused, only vaguely aware of how ridiculous the statement sounded. “I was affected, Shiro was affected, and none of the rest of you were. If the toxin were airborne, then it could mold to the specific shape of the cilantro-is-nasty olfactory receptor and set off a chain reaction of symptoms—“

“So only people who hate cilantro are affected by the toxin.”

“Yes, Keith, that’s what I said.”

“But why _cilantro_?” Lance bemoaned, arms akimbo. “Who out here would even know that it tastes nasty for some people? Heck, _I’m_ human and I thought that everyone loved cilantro until 7th grade biology! It’s not like there’s a surplus of humans floating around in space to experiment this stuff on—“

The sentence caught up to him, and the blue paladin clamped his mouth shut, eyes going wide with revelation. Pidge caught up just a moment after he did, paling at the notion: all three of the Kerberos astronauts that had been captured by the Galra (and thus served as all the Druids knew of humans at the time) disliked cilantro. If this gene was unique to humans, then specifically attacking it was an extremely effective way of targeting and capturing humans in a vast universe of millions (if not billions) of sentient species. 

“The Druids,” she muttered scathingly, fists clenched. “Whoever has Shiro and Allura must be connected with them.”

“I can do you one better,” said Coran, some parts of his normal jubilance starting to come through again despite the circumstances. “The individual we’ve been tracking is known as Rho. He is suspected of having connections to Zarkon and Haggar. Shiro and Allura were sent down to investigate various claims that he had a base of operations below the nightclub in the asteroid’s core. There was word from the Blade of Marmora of a massive biochemical weapons shipment being manufactured there, so Shiro and Allura went there undercover to investigate the claims and potentially shut down the operation.”

Pidge let out a shuddering breath as she looked at Keith and Lance, her face a mixture of horror, anger, and frustration.

They had left Hunk at a goddamned _weapons manufacturing facility_ _run by a Druid_ with zero communication, zero backup, and next to no plan, and as far as she was concerned, this was all her fault: it had been _her_ 18th birthday that they’d all been celebrating; _she_ had been the one to yell at Hunk and guilt trip him into going back for Magaea. 

If anything happened to Hunk, it was on her.

Disguising the rising lump in her throat with a cough, Pidge took a deep breath and sat down in the shotgun seat, hardly looking at the belt when she buckled herself in. Lance wordlessly scrambled to the cabin, knowing better than to protest when the youngest Holt got serious. 

“Keith, set a course for ORYON’s staff hangar,” she ordered, summoning up a map of the complex before she began to calculate their flight path. “Lance, maintain full cloaking. We’re going to get our team back.”

\- - - - - - -

 


	29. THE STORY SO FAR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! I took some time off of 'Exceptions' to work on some other projects for a bit, and realized that the length of this fic (and the amount of time between updates) sometimes makes important details difficult to remember. So, to help both you and myself, I made chapter summaries to help keep you all appraised of the events that have happened in previous chapters! I hope this helps you out and irons out any confusion that you might have about subsequent chapters!
> 
> Thank you for your continued love and support: 'Exceptions' wouldn't exist without you lovely readers!
> 
> ~Pepperz

**EXCEPTIONS – CHAPTER SUMMARIES**

 

**YEAR 1** _(seasons 1 & 2):_ **Hunk and Pidge begin their friendship and initiate a prank war.**

 

  * Part 1 – Hunk becomes Pidge’s fast friend at the Garrison. He continues to support her through the events of the first half of season 1 (up to Pidge’s gender reveal), and Pidge discovers that she loves her Voltron crew like a family.



 

  * Part 2 – Hunk brings Pidge some heating pads to help with her period cramps. The two stage a prank where they switch Keith and Lance’s rooms by fiddling with the hand pad data, which hilariously backfires.



 

**YEAR 2 ** _(starts ~after season 2)_ **: Shiro gets a new arm, and Voltron encounters new kinds of challenges during a diplomatic conference with the Qijitii.**

 

  * Part 1 – Lotor becomes active. Shiro ends up badly injured in a fight, and Hunk meets Allura in the med bay one night while Shiro is healing. She reveals that she has seen some of Shiro’s forgotten memories due to her connection with the castle, and Hunk discovers that Allura also has romantic feelings for Shiro. She asks Hunk for his and Pidge’s help in making Shiro a new arm.



 

  * Part 2 – Pidge and Hunk work on Shiro’s new arm, and concoct a new prank as they begin to notice Shiro and Allura’s budding feelings for one another. Keith and Lance bond over weight-lifting, each mourning their closest friends’ new diversions (Shiro is occupied with Allura, and Hunk spends all his time with Pidge).



 

 

  * Part 3 – Using their combined brain power, Hunk and Pidge figure out a way to cut through a tough alloy required for Shiro’s new arm, and continue plotting their prank.



 

  * Part 4 – Hunk comforts Pidge and establishes the Hunk Hug Bank. Their prank finally comes to fruition: they’d programmed Shiro’s arm to send a signal to the castle’s speakers to play Careless Whisper whenever Allura’s quintessence came into connect with it, and hilarity ensues.



 

  * Part 5 – The younger four paladins hang out in the kitchen. Lance jokingly flirts with Keith; Hunk and Pidge ponder Klance and whether Keith actually has a crush on Lance. Pidge is frustrated because she can’t read body language accurately all of the time, and she and Hunk talk about feeling ‘out of the loop’ from other people.



 

  * Part 6 – Allura and Shiro spar, and Shiro confesses that he’s still having nightmares. They give the paladins another demonstration and their Allura’s quintessence trigger is set off again. Hunk and Pidge are discovered as the culprits of the prank and are sent to clean the healing pods as punishment.



 

  * Part 7 – The paladins are debriefed on their next mission, which is to attend a mate selection summit in order to appease the Qijitii hosts and their Court of numerous, powerful allies. The Qijitii are a hive-like species with only three individuals at any given time capable of reproducing, so they assemble harems of mates of other alien species in order to reproduce. Members of alien royalty from across the universe frequently send candidates over during mate selection summits in order to form alliances with the powerful Qijitii. At the ceremony one of the head Qijitii, Rorix, takes a liking to Shiro and declares him their choice for mate, and Allura has to step in and claim that she and Shiro are engaged in order to avoid a diplomatic shitstorm.



 

  * Part 8 – Coran freaks out over Allura’s quick decision to lie to the Qijitii, and Allura reveals that she disagrees with certain aspects of Qijitii culture (particularly, marriages to obtain power and how the Qijitii take advantage of this fact to get whatever they want from their allies). Pidge encourages them to discuss a good cover story. Keith and Lance talk about Shiro and Allura as they help each other out of their cumbersome formalwear.



 

  * Part 9 – Shiro is anxious and in a funk about pretending to be Allura’s fiancée because he’s insecure and doesn’t think he’s worthy of Allura after all he’s been through. Shiro and Allura get their fake-engagement story straight, and they tell each other about wedding customs on each of their respective planets. The Voltron crew attends the second day of the banquet, and Pidge reveals a project she’s been working on to Hunk: the C.U.B.E., a remote spy device that she’d finished the night before because she’s starting to get suspicious of the Qijitii.



 

  * Part 10 – The four younger paladins dance (Keith is more reluctant) as Shiro and Allura fall into their roles. Pidge figures out that the C.U.B.E. must have run out of batteries and is now in the middle of the dance floor. She grabs Hunk for a dance and gets him to dip her in the precise spot she needs him to be to retrieve the device.



 

  * Part 11A – Pidge fixes the C.U.B.E. in the bathroom and she and Hunk loiter outside with some snacks. A fight breaks out, and two Harpeyii (bird-like aliens that serve the Galra Druids and can manipulate time to inflict pain on their victims) threaten and taunt Shiro, who is paralyzed with fear. They attack Pidge, and when Hunk steps in to protect her, they attack him as well.



 

  * Part 11B – In the med bay back at the castle, Pidge goes through the data collected by the C.U.B.E. in an attempt to distract herself from having another panic attack. As she frets over inconsistencies in their injuries and what they’d actually experienced at the ceremony, she inevitably falls into a panic, and she confides in the lions, who manifest in her mind to comfort her. She goes to the infirmary to check on Shiro and Hunk, and meets Lance in the room with Hunk’s pod. Lance is guilty over not being there when stuff went down, while PIdge is frustrated that she couldn’t do more to help, and they comfort each other.



 

  * Part 12 – Now suspicious that the Qijitii are up to something, Allura, Lance, and Keith represent Voltron on the third night of the mate selection ceremony, and try to figure out what the Qijitii know about the Harpeyii. Shiro recalls them from his imprisonment, and warns the team that they might be involved in illegal genetic experiments, which sets Keith off. Keith and Lance are tasked with finding the Qijitii mainframe so that she can have the C.U.B.E. hack their files and figure out what they’re hiding. Keith confides in his family’s past to Lance. Rorix, one of the royal Qijitii, seeks Keith out, having decided to take him as his mate now that Shiro is ‘unavailable,’ and in order to save him Lance pretends to be his husband when Rorix inevitably finds them in a side room trying to hack into the mainframe.



 

  * Part 13 – Back at the castle, Pidge is chastised by Shiro for her crude language and laments to Coran about being treated like a child. Coran concludes that she’s really missing Hunk and should go visit him in the med bay. She does, and he’s promptly released from the cryo pod and lands on Pidge on his way out. Meanwhile, at the ceremony, Keith and Lance are being _extremely_ convincing with their husbands cover-up (i.e. making out in the closet), and manage to throw Rorix off of their trail.



 

  * Part 14 – Back at the castle, Keith and Lance talk about how they’re going to keep up their husbands front and end up ‘practicing’ (i.e. sloppily making out in the hallway). They manage to be convincing on the fourth day of the mate selection ceremony, but Lance is beginning to have feelings for Keith and confides in Hunk about how he fears that Keith will reject him if he says something. Pidge hacks the handprint scanner on Lance’s door because she’s looking for Hunk, and awkwardness ensues. Later, in the lab, Pidge complains about hating the sound of kissing, and she and Hunk sift through the data that Keith and Lance collected with the C.U.B.E. and discover some shady inconsistencies with their trade records.



 

  * Part 15 – Pidge and Hunk decrypt some of the transaction data in the trade records and discover that the Qijitii have been trafficking members of the royal harem and taking monetary bribes to secure alliances. Lance, Keith, and Allura launch an operation to investigate the Qijitii harems, and find a laboratory full of harvested genetic material and gametes from harem members as well as several hundred grotesque, mutated test-tube fetuses that were destined for the gladiator rings. Lance is horrified at what he sees and becomes extremely angry at the Qijitii because Keith and Shiro may have had similar fates, and he beats up Rorix before he can be informed that the Galra had been pulling the strings all along. Lance has a breakdown on the training deck, and Keith comforts him as he ponders the developments of the last few days. Their work done for the time being, Hunk and Pidge crash on the couch, and briefly discuss the inconsistencies in Hunk’s injuries.



 

**YEAR 3 ** _(starts after season 4 [sort of: canon gets fuzzy here, especially with respect to Shiro and his clone])_ **: Team Voltron goes to the beach, Pidge explores and confronts her insecurities and feelings, and a night at the club turns into an utter fiasco.**

  * Part 1 – It’s Hunk’s 19th birthday, and to celebrate Team Votron (plus Matt) goes to the vacation planet Belteguese to spend the day at the beach. Keith laments about his crush on Lance to Pidge, and later the team take turns playing chicken in the waves.



 

  * Part 2 – The Garrison Trio looks for shells on the beach, and they find several shards of lucinerite, a special, bone-based mineral that conducts quintessence and is frequently carved into trinkets by locals. Keith teaches Hunk how to whittle, and the team begins to play Bucket-o-Fun (a game with tasks, questions, dares, etc. that people write and then draw out of a hat). Hunk cuts his hand while whittling, and Pidge reveals that she’s been doing some extracurricular medical training in her free time when she quickly bandages him up. She grabs the shard of lucinerite he’d been carving and puts it in her pocket.



 

  * Part 3 – Pidge is anxious and goes to the natatorium when she can’t sleep, and confides her anxiety in Lance: after the Qijitii incident and then seeing Tiaj die in front of her, she doesn’t want to be a passive bystander when she can do something to help. Lance suggests that she swims with him to build up core strength and relieve stress. She builds enough muscle to warrant a trip to Space Costco for new clothes, and gets flustered when Hunk wipes some ice cream off of her chin. She talks about being sexually frustrated to Lance, and how she thought she used to be asexual but that things were changing. Lance suggests that they all relieve their tension by going to the ORYON nightclub on Pidge’s 18th birthday as honored guests, and the four younger paladins begin planning a trip.



 

  * Part 4 – The four younger paladins suspect that the adults are up to something and not telling them, but use the opportunity to continue planning their visit to ORYON. Meanwhile, Coran, Allura, and Shiro are actually keeping things from them, and schedule a party for Pidge’s birthday as a cover for their absences. They all go to a swap moon to get various supplies (Hunk needs baking stuff and Allura is helping Pidge shop for formalwear, which she begrudgingly agrees to), and Allura offers to help Pidge try on clothes using her shapeshifting. Pidge agrees, but quickly finds that Allura’s ‘girlier,’ more ‘refined’ version of Pidge is drawing out all of her insecurities, and locks herself in the changing stall. Hunk comes in after shopping to help out, realizes that Pidge doesn’t look the same, and freaks out, thinking she’s been kidnapped and replaced with an impostor. Keith talks Pidge out of the changing stall and back to the castle.



 

  * Part 5 – After Pidge calms down, she and Keith talk about her body image issues and how she’s always inevitably comparing herself to Allura, who she claims is so much more capable and likeable than she is. Keith tells her that it’s important to acknowledge feelings rather than letting them fester, and tells her that Allura has plenty of her own struggles. Meanwhile, Shiro and Allura discuss an upcoming, high-risk mission as they decorate the common room for Pidge’s birthday, and later the younger paladins solidify their plans to go to ORYON. They arrive and are given VIP treatment, and while they’re having fun Hunk and Pidge are slightly awkward around one another, still tender from the swap moon incident. On a visit to the bathroom Pidge meets Magaea, a half-Galra, half-Unilu young woman who lost track of her friends, and the two hit it off.



 

  * Part 6 – Unbeknownst to the younger paladins, Shiro and Allura begin their secret mission, donning disguises and posing as newlyweds before heading into ORYON. They scan the various floors of the club looking for a specific energy signature, and eventually end up in the Blackout Room, a floor with very little light and lots of glowsticks. Meanwhile, Pidge introduces Magaea to Hunk, Lance, and Keith, and Hunk is instantly paranoid and doesn’t want Pidge giving out too many details about who they are. He also suspects that Pidge has a crush on her. They all hang out, and Keith and Magaea bond over being half-Galra. Hunk asks Magaea a question, and her answer leads him to believe that she is working for the Galra. On their way to the Blackout Room he confronts Pige and tells her his suspicions, but she becomes furious with him and stomps away.



 

  * Part 7 –Meanwhile, Keith is becoming slightly disoriented on the dance floor, and Magaea informs him that he’s shifted (some of his features have become more Galra in appearance: he’s taller, his sceras are yellow, etc), which is normal for half-Galra who are under duress. With his enhanced sight he sees someone creeping on Lance, and scares them away, but before he can retreat Lance dances with him instead, and doesn’t recognize Keith at all. They flirt, and end up kissing, but Keith retreats because he feels predatory and realizes that his feelings for Lance are much aren’t going to go away with a quick hook-up. Pidge remains in denial about Magaea’s involvement with anything fishy, but her suspicions still prompt her to send out a data dragnet to check for anything shady. She and Magaea talk about belonging, fitting in, and being oneself, and then they confess their attraction to one another and kiss. Meanwhile, Shiro and Allura manage to lock onto a signal.



 

  * Part 8 – Hunk is in the bathroom trying to text Pidge, but sees Keith crying in a nearby stall and catches the tail end of his shift out of his Galra form. They talk about their personal woes, and Hunk juggles consoling Keith while also trying to communicate with Lance over the phone. When Keith tells Hunk he’s never gone ‘full Galra’ before, Hunk’s alarm bells go off and he realizes that something is fishy, and goes to get Pidge while Keith grabs Lance. They resolve to meet in the hangars, but when Hunk attempts to get Pidge she seems drunk, and lets slip that she’s a member of Voltron. Magaea gets scared and ushers them out without causing a stir, disappearing into the crowd. They all make it to the hangar when Hunk feels guilty about Magaea and jumps out of the pod, telling Keith to get Pidge to a healing pod on the castle, but when they arrive at the coordinates the castle is gone. Meanwhile, Shiro is also acting drunk, prompting Alura to drag him into a photo booth to sit down. They are sedated and captured, and Allura wakes up bound in a cell and is taunted by an Altean cyborg that appears to have known her father and claims that Alfor left unpaid debts to him.



 

  * Part 9 – The Altean cyborg is known as Rho, an independent terrorist that specializes in bio-weaponry with previously unknown motives that the Blade of Marmora has been tracking. Rho had been known as Rolan back on Altea, and had been a friend of Allura’s before being banished for treason. He seems to know of Allura’s affection for Shiro, and taunts them both with restraints that negate Allura’s transformative abilities and causes Shiro to burn himself. Rho pledges his allegiance to the Voltron Coalition. Meanwhile, Pidge wakes up and experiences a violent reaction, and she helps Keith and Lance track down Coran and the castle. Pidge figures out that she was sedated using a gene-specific aerosol that attacks the same olfactory receptors that perceive foul-tasting cilantro, and realizes that whoever sedated her must have had some understanding of human biology (i.e. the Galra Empire, as they’d enslaved Matt, Shiro, and Sam). They learn of Shiro and Allura’s mission and the danger they and Hunk are now in, and launch an offensive on ORYON together. Hunk tracks down Magaea, who seems aware of the danger they’re in, but will not leave because there is a device attached to her wrist that is rigged with an explosive that will detonate if tempered with.



 

 

 


	30. Year 3 (part 10)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Blood, violence (particularly gun violence)

** Year 3 (Part 10) **

Allura couldn’t believe it. She _wouldn’t_ believe it.

And yet here she was, bound and injured on a cold metal floor, Shiro’s unconscious body startlingly still beside her, and her captor that should have died ten thousand decaheebs ago proposing an _alliance_.

“Are you _mad?!_ ” she shrieked, unable to draw upon even a morsel of her diplomatic training to deal with this at the moment, this unfathomably absurd proposition. “In what universe did you think that forcibly imprisoning myself and one of my paladins would win you our favor? How could I even begin to trust you after what you did to Shiro?”

Rho laughed light-heartedly, waving his hand as if clearing smoke. “Consider it a demonstration and a precaution,” he drawled, the corners of his cloak billowing in a nonexistent breeze. “Zarkon may be on his way out, but his son is an entirely different beast: Lotor is cunning, well-connected, and adaptable, and the strategies that have brought the Voltron Coalition this far will no longer work when that inquisitive brat is in the Emperor’s seat. You will need me—and the tools I have to offer—to take Lotor down once and for all, but we must operate as if we were enemies if we are to outsmart him.” 

Allura narrowed her eyes. “Lotor was disgraced and banished hundreds of decapheebs ago, and has not been seen in the Galra Empire until recently,” she recounted. “How can you be so sure of his methods and intentions? Why are you so intent on defeating him after serving his family for so long?”

Another cold chuckle. “I still remember the day that the Druid physicians tore him wriggling and screaming from Haggar’s womb. He was such a wretched little thing: never stopped wailing. Zarkon was under the delusion that he could inspire unwavering loyalty in the absence of love; that Lotor would be his perfect prince and heir, but all he created was a monster.”

The princess suppressed a shiver: the ro-beasts they’d faced had all been made to combat Voltron, but Lotor—if Rho was right, then it was if he’d been _born_ to be their adversary. 

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she continued, leveling the druid with a level gaze. “Why should I believe anything you tell me? What reason would we have to accept the kind of ‘help’ you have to offer?”

Rho looked down to Shiro’s unconscious form, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Was the blind audition not enough? Surely, if Shiro’s cybernetic arm had actually concerned you, you would have seen it fully removed?”

Allura felt her blood run cold.

“I sense some modifications to my handiwork, but it appears that the bio-adapted core processor remained intact,” Rho muttered, eyeing Shiro’s artificial arm. “And based on the data I received the arm has served him well, has it not?”

Allura couldn’t argue: in the absence of a bayard, the weaponized prosthetic had served as a more than adequate alternative.

“I am not your enemy,” Rho reiterated, though his tone seemed hardly convincing, “but I need you to go about your lives as if I were your enemy if we are to get anywhere with undermining the Galra royal family’s power. Hate me all you want, but I’ll gladly bear the burden of your ire if I have this chance to eliminate this dark monarchy once and for all.”

“You are no ally of ours,” Allura snapped, wincing as she struggled against her restraints. “Whatever you have planned, Voltron will stop you!”

Rho smiled. “And I wouldn’t expect anything less, princess.”

He dissolved into shadow once more, his disembodied voice floating around her like a fine mist. 

“Until we meet again, Allura.”

With a soft _click_ , the restraints around both herself and Shiro’s hands disengaged, clattering to the floor with an anticlimactic thump. Allura winced as her injured hand throbbed with its newfound circulation, the tender skin of her wrists chaffed and burned from the restraints. Shiro began to stir beside her, eyes blinking open as he took in his surroundings, jolting to a start as he remembered their situation.

“’Lura?” he asked, glancing at both their wrists in disbelief. “We’re—how did we—“ 

Shiro winced as he caught the odd angle of Allura’s wrist and thumb. 

“You’re hurt—“ 

“No time for that now,” she interrupted, touched as she was by Shiro’s concern. “We need to figure a way out of—“

A soft rumbling resonated from one of the walls, and a door to a walkway materialized on its surface. 

Well. 

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Shiro muttered, wincing as he got to his feet with Allura’s aid. Throwing prudence aside, they crossed the threshold into the dark hallway, hardly daring to glance back behind them as they continued into the inky abyss. 

\- - - - - - - 

Needless to say, the employees in the staff hangar were given the shock of their lives when the transport pod came barreling in through the exit, damaging several of the runway lights as it skidded to a halt in front of the elevator shaft. 

The advantage of surprise, however, was short-lived: a security detail of half a dozen burly looking aliens with three sets of arms and six blasters apiece approached the pod entrance with the stealth of a herd of rogue elephants, posed to strike at the side door as soon as it had unfurled from the spacecraft, but the paladins were too fast: Pidge detonated a flash-bang from the pod’s sun roof, and in the ensuing confusion Lance easily picked them off using the stun setting on his rifle. 

Donned in a flight suit to counteract the effects of the aerosolized agent that had made her sick earlier, Pidge launched herself out of the pod, Keith following behind her in his Marmora suit with his blade drawn as Lance took the wheel of the pod. Kolivan would be sending reinforcements, but it would take them at least thirty doboshes to reach the asteroid and they didn’t have time to waste where their teammates were concerned. 

“Hunk went up this way,” Keith said, practically sprinting up the stairwell with Pidge in tow. “I’m guessing that he went straight back to the Blackout Room to look for Magaea, so we’ll start there and work our way backwards. Do you know if Hunk had his bayard with him?”

Pidge nodded. “I tried tracking it, but the signal isn’t getting through. This place is big enough to have a significant service network of tunnels, so we’ll have to check those as well.”

“ _I’ve also sent you the coordinates to Shiro and Allura’s most recent location about a varga ago_ ,” came Coran’s voice through the comm link, the connection slightly fuzzy with the interference of the protective force field around the asteroid. 

Pidge pulled up the map on her visor screen, eyebrows knit as she scrutinized the plans: according to this, Shiro and Allura had been somewhere in the heating and cooling systems, which hardly made any sense unless they’d both been liquefied into antifreeze. 

But before she could tell Coran as much, Keith froze midway through a flight of stairs, his body tensing as something seemed to catch his attention. His face scrunched up, nostrils flaring as he sampled the air, eyes widening in recognition for a fraction of a second before he continued his ascent.

Had Keith just—had he just _smelled_ the air?

“They’re up here,” Keith relayed with more confidence than Pidge honestly gave him credit for, because no human could just freaking _smell_ something and know that—

_ Well _ , she reasoned with herself, _Keith isn’t entirely human, is he?_

__

But she didn’t have time to dwell on that now: her teammates were close, and they needed to regroup and get out of here as soon as—

Pidge nearly ran into Keith as she rounded a corner, and had half a mind to make a jab at how his newfound Galra abilities hadn’t extended to his reflexes until she realized why he’d stopped.

\- - - - - - -

**_ five doboshes earlier _ **

_ Hunk drew in a sharp breath as he scanned over the bracelet encircling Magaea’s wrist, trying his best to apply what little he knew about disarming explosives to their current predicament. But as time went on, he was running out of ideas: he didn’t have the tools or the magnification to do delicate work, and even if he had there had been absolutely no time and no work space and— _

__

_ And the bracelet was beeping. _

__

The bracelet was beeping. 

__

_ Magaea shot him a look of terror, the blood draining from her face.  _

__

_ “Hunk, you need to leave; shelter yourself—“ _

__

_ There was no time. There was nothing they could do.  _

__

_ Hunk whipped his head around, searching, desperate,  _ begging _the sparsely outfitted stairwell for something he could use to disarm the bombs, to reduce their impact when they inevitably detonated—_

__

_ The door. _

__

_ He pulled her over to the door leading to the next floor of the stairwell, opening it just wide enough for Hunk to slip her hands into the threshold, pinning them in place with the door as gently as he could. Hand shaking, he pulled his bayard out of his pocket, brows furrowing as he concentrated on activating the shield function. He kneeled in the space between the door and Magaea’s torso, raising the shield to cover the both of them as much as possible. She’d crumpled and started shaking with sobs, half her weight leaning on Hunk’s shoulders as he pushed himself between the door and her body, and it was all Hunk could do to not break down along with her. He felt a lump rise in his throat, swallowing loudly as the tears streamed down his cheeks, slowing down his breath as the beeping became louder, louder, louder— _

__

_ Suddenly they were blown back, though not from explosion kickback: it was nowhere near bone-rattling enough; nowhere near as loud or bright, but it was enough to topple them both nonetheless, Hunk’s head landing on Magaea’s stomach as gravity pushed them back. A pair of arms clutched at his shoulders, the long nails digging in enough to pull the fabric of his dress shirt into angry, puckered pinpricks as she braced for her hands being obliterated from her lower set of arms— _

__

_ A lower set of arms that no longer seemed to exist. _

__

_ A distinct clattering emanated from the other side of the door, and Hunk had only half a second to register what had happened before a deafening roar and a pulsing shockwave of hot air blew them back, and he was out like a light, the world smothered in darkness as consciousness left him.  _

\- - - - - - -

Pidge couldn’t suppress a cry as she took in the sight of the yellow paladin, his body slumped and lifeless on the cold, hard floor, his inactive bayard just inches from his outstretched hand. The foundations of the nearby threshold had all but collapsed, blocking their access to the dance floor, smoke pouring into the room from the remaining cracks, but none of it mattered, because Hunk wasn’t moving, _her teammate wasn’t moving_ — 

_ “HUNK!”  _

With no concern for the potential dangers that still lurked there Pidge tore around Keith, falling to her knees beside her friend, whimpering helplessly as she brushed the dust and debris from his eyes, his nose, his lips, shakily activating the diagnostic module on her wrist as she searched for signs of life.

For a few horrifying seconds she held her breath, the device doing its work with an almost calm impartiality despite how it shook in time with her body, until there— _there_ —his chest had moved, and a heartbeat had registered on the module, and Pidge could have _cried_ with relief, her breath hitching as she pressed her lips into the crease between his eyebrows as best she could given the limitations posed by the helmet’s visor, and when she drew back a spot of ash and debris clouded its once pristine surface, the faint wrinkle impressions of Hunk’s brow like tiny rivulets of water among the soot and dirt—

Something stirred beneath him, and only then did Pidge notice a familiar pair of well-manicured hands digging into Hunk’s shoulders, the layer of cinders all but obscuring Magaea’s lavender skin against the rich brown of Hunk’s, a dry, labored cough disturbing some of the dust that had settled on their bodies. 

_ “Mag!” _

Like Hunk, she was on her back, her stomach and legs disappearing behind his body while the rest of her torso remained half-buried under flaking debris and what looked like alien drywall, and within seconds Keith was beside her and sweeping it away from her body, throwing away the heftier chunks as if they were little more than crumpled up paper. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with Hunk and Magaea’s conditions Pidge would have dwelled on Keith’s unusual strength and slightly pointier-than-usual ears more thoroughly, but as it was Keith was carefully hauling Magaea out from Hunk’s bulk, bringing her into a sitting position as Pidge got to work on clearing away some splintered pieces of what she assumed had once been a door from Hunk’s lap.

“We’ve got Magaea and Hunk,” Keith hissed into the comm link, and Coran’s shrill voice asking who the quiznak this Magaea person was swiftly cut off. “Hunk is out cold, and according to Pidge’s readout has a concussion and some bruised ribs.”

“And this other individual of whom you speak?” Coran offered warily. 

“Mag is awake but disoriented. We need to get out of here quickly: the smoke is building up and it is becoming difficult to see and breathe.”

“Can you both make it back to the hangar with them?”

“It’ll take some time, but I can meet you down there with the both of them in five doboshes.”

He opened the channel with Lance, flinching slightly as the sounds of laser fire pinged out of the speaker. 

“I’m a little busy here!” the blue paladin yelped, the sound muffling briefly as Lance presumably rubbed the speaker of his comm against something. 

“Lance, we’ve found Hunk and Magaea, and they need medical attention. Can you pilot the pod as close to the stairwell as possible?”

“You’re gonna need cover for at least a few meters between me and the stairs.”

“If you have a firearm, I can help,” Magaea gasped, coughing into her fist. Her eyes were still squinted in the thick smoke, tearing in the corners from sensitivity, but when she finally caught sight of Keith she gasped. 

This uniform—the insignia on his sword—

“You’re a _Blade_?” she asked incredulously, but Keith all but ignored her as he transformed his bayard into a rifle and shoved it into Magaea’s hands, helping her up to her feet as he joined Pidge beside Hunk. He was still somewhat reluctant to trust her, but if she knew of the Blade—

His thoughts cut short as Pidge screamed: she hunched her body protectively over Hunk’s, activating her bayard as if on impulse to shove the electrified barb into his stomach. The red paladin then remembered had all but completely reverted to his Galra state, eyes glowing and canines sharp and gleaming through the part of his lips, but when Pidge finally had a moment to take him in, her posture slackened.

“ _Keith?_ What—how’re you—?“

“There’s no time to explain right now: we need to get Mag and Hunk to the hangar,” he barked, helping Pidge clear off the last of the debris as Magaea stood guard.

“Hunk’s unconscious, he’ll be dead weight,” said the green paladin, glancing between the both of them warily. 

“Help me get him up, Pidge,” Keith insisted, and she complied, just now realizing that the Galra transformation had also added some height.

And, apparently, some strength.

He hefted Hunk onto his shoulders, straining visibly under the weight, but steadfast nonetheless as he began to descend the stairs, Magaea beginning to limp after them.

Pidge paused, and couldn’t help but feel that she looked—different. 

And then it hit her. 

She was by Magaea’s side in an instant, ducking under her arm—one of only two—to support her weaker side, clutching the guardrail as they followed Keith down. 

“You okay?” Pidge asked, leaning affectionately into the other woman’s side as they rounded the bend.

“My ankle is sore, but otherwise I’m fine,” she replied, kissing the side of Pidge’s helmet despite that it was covered in soot. “It would have been much worse had Hunk not been there.”

Pidge’s breath hitched, turning her head to take the woman in.   

“He saved my life, Pidge: he—he could have run and saved himself, but he protected me.”

She looked at Keith ahead of them; at Hunk’s unconscious body hefted onto his shoulders: his shirt had been all but torn to shreds, and his back was littered with scratches and blooming with bruises. Bits of metal paneling had caught him in the sides, the shrapnel somewhat shallow but sticky with blood, and a part of Pidge was grateful that Hunk wasn’t awake to process what was probably unimaginable pain.

There had been some sort of explosion, that much was clear from the blast patterns in the stairwell and the shrapnel, and if what Magaea was saying was true then Hunk had used himself as a shield to save her from the brunt of the blast.

He’d done that for _her_. 

And Magaea looked—surprised to be alive, if Pidge was being completely honest, and no amount of acting could have replicated her look of utter confusion and bewilderment when she glanced at her arms—her single pair of arms—even double checking to see whether the other two had really just disappeared instead of simply being blown off. 

“I’m taking that isn’t normal for you?” Pidge asked shakily, still reeling from emotion as she caught sight of Hunk’s crumpled form again, unable to erase the sight of his blank, soot-covered face from her mind.

“It isn’t normal, no,” she replied shakily, hugging her arms around her middle. “I didn’t even know I could do that: I mean, I’ve had four arms for as long as I can remember.”

Pidge thought it odd that she hadn’t used the phrase ‘my entire life,’ but remained silent as Magaea continued.

“The bracelets, too: they were my father’s, and were somehow rigged to explode? I don’t understand.”

Pidge racked her brain, trying to make sense of all of this: could Magaea have Altean (or another chameliid species’) blood, and just unlocked her transformation skills? Had her bracelets been tampered with? She’d come here with a group of friends: surely this hadn’t been orchestrated—

Well, unless it _had_ been orchestrated. 

But even now, Magaea seemed so uncomfortable and out of sorts with only two arms: she stumbled and flailed, attempting to steady herself with limbs she no longer had, checking her armpits over and over again to see if the other pair of arms was really gone—

Keith grunted ahead of them, stopping for a moment to adjust Hunk on his back. Pidge could make out Coran’s voice over the comm links, but the words blurred into one another as a rumble emanated somewhere above them. She could have sworn she’d seen Keith’s ears twitch at the sound, and no sooner had Magaea also frozen in alarm and cocked the transformed bayard awkwardly behind them, nostrils flaring as several voices echoed down the stairwell. 

“Took them long enough,” Pidge muttered, readying her own bayard as Magaea fingered the trigger. Between the three of them, and unspoken plan began to form: Keith would continue his way down with Hunk, and Pidge and Magaea would hold these goons off and join the boys when they could. 

Pidge reached over to set the red bayard to ‘stun,’ charging her own with electricity just as Keith disappeared around the bend. 

“You any good with that thing?” she asked wryly, ducking into the niche under the staircase as the green bayard hummed with energy. Magaea scoffed, sending her a conniving grin as she activated the rifle’s viewfinder. 

“I can hold my own,” she offered casually, pointing the gun up and letting off a shot. Someone swore, and an almost comical collision ensued, the clattering of armor and weapons echoing all the way down the stairwell. The shell ejected automatically, clattering to the floor beside them with a sense of finality as she readied her next shot, sending Pidge a flirtatious wink.

“Cover me?” she asked innocently, and Pidge felt a blush creep down her neck. _Cute._

“Y-yeah.”

\- - - - - - -

They were about three quarters of the way down when Hunk began to emerge from unconsciousness.

He groaned quietly, coughing a little as he cleared some of the soot from his lungs, turning his head this way and that to see what was going on: as far as he could tell he was being carried (albeit with significant strain), but his head was throbbing so hard that he couldn’t discern whose shoulder he was currently slung over. 

“Hey, Hunk,” Keith whispered, barely sparing a breath as he concentrated on not tripping on the stairs. 

“Magaea—?“

“She’s fine: just a twisted ankle and some scratches. Pidge is helping her down the stairs. How’re you holding up?”

“M’ head’s killing me,” he mumbled in response, squinting as the fluorescent lighting sent spots dancing in front of his eyes. 

“You have a concussion,” the red paladin stated matter-of-factly, panting as he began descending the stairs two at a time. 

“Well if you already knew how I was then why did you ask?”

“Just quit your sassing and stay awake from now on,” Keith snarked back, happy to see that Hunk wasn’t so hurt as to hold back his sass. “We’re almost to the hangar: Lance is going to pick you and Magaea up and get you back to the castle, and Pidge and I are going to—“

“ _Wait_ wait wait wait wait,” Hunk interrupted, blinking more rapidly now. “How are you—how are you _carrying_ me right now?”

“Galra genes and Blade training,” he offered off-handedly, stopping momentarily to both catch his breath and fish out Hunk’s bayard.

“We’re going to need cover when I get you to the shuttle, so activate your shield,” Keith instructed, placing the yellow bayard into Hunk’s hands. “I’ll double back for Magaea once she and Pidge get down here.” 

Hunk muttered his assent, flinching slightly when his ears caught the soft _poppop-pop_ of a nearby rifle, and Lance’s ensuing return fire: he could vaguely hear Coran giving Keith instructions over the comms, his voice clipped and stressed, and immediately felt the guilt curl in his gut. Coming to this place without the others’ permission had been imprudent and stupid, and he’d nearly been blown up for it. 

A fact that he was acutely reminded of when he shifted his torso to hoist the shield over their heads, and a sharp, needle-like pain emanated down his back. He instinctively placed a hand over the area that hurt the most and cried out as the pain echoed in his fingers and palm, hissing as warm blood dripped from his fingers. 

“Keep clear of the shrapnel, big guy,” Keith muttered almost off-handedly as he pulled up his hood and activated the Marmora mask, his voice shaking with anxiety as the entrance to the staff hangar loomed ever closer. Gritting his teeth, Hunk dug the fingers of his uninjured hand into the bayard’s handle, growling with effort as he raised it above his shoulders and activated the shield. 

The light was even more blinding in the hangar, and it was all Hunk could do to keep himself and Keith covered as a fresh wave of blasts rocketed towards them, his face scrunched up in pain as the shield bounced against the wounds in his back with each of Keith’s less than gentle steps. Lance’s voice barely registered over the gunfire, and even if his eyes were too sensitive to perceive the blue paladin’s presence he felt a part of himself instantly relax, and suddenly this escape was becoming less and less impossible and—

Something tore through his leg, punching the air from his lungs. Lance screamed something unintelligible (Hunk couldn’t tell, as his ears felt as if they’d been stuffed with cotton), letting loose a barrage of gunfire at the general direction from which the bullet had come. Hunk thought that his reaction had been a little over the top compared to the severity of the injury, but when he looked down at the limb he suddenly understood why.

The bullet had nicked his femoral artery, and within the span of about ten seconds a pint of his blood had already spilled onto the floor. He was almost transfixed by it, a river of red pooling wherever Keith stopped for more than a tick, whipping across the gleaming hangar floor with the grace and spontaneity of a Pollock painting.

Would Pidge’s shoes get soiled on the way to the pod? He hoped his blood wouldn’t soak through to the soles: she’d bag on him for weeks if he ruined her brand new flats…

Wide, watery blue eyes swam into his vision—of course, Lance must have thought the same thing, he’d—he’d picked those shoes out…himself…

Hunk closed his eyes.

 

\- - - - - - -


	31. Year 3 (part 11)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: description of injuries/blood; mild panic episode

** Year 3 (Part 11) **

****

Keith didn’t consider himself a religious person. 

Church every Sunday had never seemed to end: even Iverson’s gruff, authoritarian voice would have seemed pleasant next to the crotchety pastor at Our Lady of the Holy Light. At six years old he’d been convinced that the man had actually been old enough to witness the Bible first-hand, and was simply _pretending_ to read the Holy Book to keep up a good front, and that his equally antiquated and sour wife who ran the Sunday School program had been an agent of Lucifer himself, hidden in plain sight within a house of God. 

Needless to say, he hadn’t prayed in many, many years, but when the force of the bullet tearing through Hunk’s thigh had been sufficient to nearly knock the red paladin onto his stomach, Keith found himself literally on his knees inside of the pod, begging through labored breaths for someone— _anyone_ —with _any_ semblance of knowledge on how to keep Hunk from bleeding to death to _get fucking to it_ , because Lance was looking at him now as if he were responsible for all of this and if Hunk bled out here and now he _would_ be, and—

A choked, piercing wail that sounded vaguely like Hunk’s name fizzed from Lance’s comm, and all of the sudden a small green blur was rocketing itself into the fray, attracting a spray of laser fire as it tore across the floor. Magaea looked on from the threshold, the activated red and green bayards in her hands, seeming to catch up to what had happened just as Keith glanced over in time to see one of the shots clip Pidge’s shoulder. 

She stumbled, yelling out in pain as she fell into a roll, but the momentum carried her back up to her feet just in time for another laser to graze her left forearm, the shot clean enough to push her off-course and leave a smoking scorch mark in the armor. Now close enough to the pod that Keith could see the whites of her eyes, Pidge grit her teeth and launched herself at Hunk, shoving Keith out of the way as she ripped her helmet off. 

“Back the pod into the stairwell, Lance!” she bellowed, making quick work of Hunk’s blood-soaked pant leg as she tore it down the middle. She didn’t have to tell Keith to grab Magaea once they’d gotten close enough, and within seconds the pod had sealed shut and skidded down the runway, clipping several expensive-looking spacecraft as Lance hurtled then out into space, swearing in Spanish under his breath as Coran’s frantic voice echoed over the comms. 

“Keith, are you okay?” Pidge muttered, almost as an after-thought, as she pushed up the edge of Hunk’s boxers to reveal the wound. 

“Yes, but—“

“Take Hunk’s belt off and wrap it around his thigh, just under the groin, as tight as you can with the buckle facing up,” she demanded, throwing the torn section of his pants to the dazed half-Unilu beside her before she pressed her glove hand onto the wound. 

“Mag, tear me some strips and tie them together at the ends. _Hurry the fuck up_ with that belt, Kogane!”

Try as he might, Keith’s hands were shaking with nerves, fumbling with the buckle for another moment before it finally slipped off. He did as Pidge instructed, silently apologizing as he manhandled Hunk’s ass and legs to get the belt into position, slumping back to give Pidge some space to work when he was done. 

“Direct pressure, elevation, pressure point, pressure bandage,” he heard her mutter, once, twice, thrice, like a mantra as Magaea secured the makeshift bandage around the wound, chest heaving with effort as she hoisted Hunk’s leg up onto her uninjured shoulder, biting her lip as the movement agitated her own injuries. Keith came up behind her to help her provide elevation, and she pitched forward as Hunk’s leg was hoisted higher than she could have ever managed in this state on her own. 

The red paladin had fully expected Pidge to hoist herself back up and continue fretting over Hunk after that, but when her hunched form failed to recover and instead began to shake with sobs, Keith knew that her adrenaline had finally run out. 

“Lance, get to the Castle _now_!” Keith hissed as he heard a sniffle from the cockpit, reaching out a hand to pull Pidge tightly to his chest with his free hand as her sobs steadily became louder. 

“Pidge, your shoulder—“ he began, feeling the punctured metal with his fingers. 

“I’ll l-live,” she hiccupped, wiping the tears away on her armor, “b-but Hunk—he’s l-lost so much blood—“ 

“But you did great, Pidge: you were amazing, and you’ve given Hunk his best chance,” Keith whispered, watching as the blood slowly bloomed on the makeshift bandages, albeit more slowly than it had before. 

Magaea looked on from her position by Hunk’s head, pulling some loose strands of sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes as Keith and Pidge exchanged quiet murmurs. The yellow paladin’s face was now far paler than she’d remembered, dull and scratched and damn near lifeless as his breaths came out in small, labored pants. Not a square inch of his remaining clothing seemed to have been spared of blood, and she suspected that her hands were more or less the same. She wouldn’t know, though, as she hadn’t been able to bring herself to even look at them since just after takeoff.

Her hands were stained, physically and metaphorically, with the price of her freedom, and as Hunk’s chest strained to pull air into his lungs she couldn’t help but think that she hadn’t been worth it. She had nothing; _was_ nothing—even her own name didn’t quite seem to fit anymore, and when she thought of the time that had passed; the things that she’d done…

There was pulsing music and flashing lights; gleaming floors and whirring machinery; the leering smirks and wandering hands—

Pidge and her beautiful, bouncing curls and emerald green eyes and tear after tear rolling down her soft, anguished face—

“Mag!” Keith barked, and a blur of red and black hovered somewhere in her field of vision, his piercing eyes searching her face. “Shit…Magaea, you’re going to hurt yourself if you—“

Who was Magaea? 

Did she have a family? Parents? Friends? What had happened yesterday? A decaphoeb ago? 

Who was _she_? 

_ What _ was she? 

****

A splitting pain erupted behind her eyes: flashes of colors, bright and sharp, prickled along her skin, the sound metallic on her tongue as some unknown floodgate opened within her, bursting, glittering—

The world went white.

\- - - - - - -

Pidge looked close to breaking down when Coran finally received them at the castle. 

He’d received a frantic transmission three doboshes ago that the paladins’ new companion had suddenly gone into a violent fit, nearly tearing out her own hair as she’d thrashed and screamed, only to go limp in the green paladin’s arms ticks later. Magaea was still on the floating gurney, her vitals steady and normal, the change of clothes that Allura had helped her into crisp and white against the dark lilac of her skin: she looked as peaceful as one could have under the circumstances, which was less than he could say about Hunk. 

When he’d first seen the yellow Paladin, Coran had feared the worst: he was so pale, and had obviously lost so much blood, and his mangled leg was beginning to turn purple from the tourniquet—if Hunk survived he’d likely lose the limb, or at the very least would have some serious damage that not even the healing pod could completely fix. It went without saying that Pidge had almost certainly saved his life, but with the way she stared at his pod, her eyes glazed over as Coran sutured the wound on her shoulder, it was almost as if she was preparing herself for the worst. 

The comms crackled to life, the both of them flinching violently as the transmission patched through. 

“We found Shiro and Allura,” came Keith’s voice over the speakers, prompting Coran to sigh in relief. “The princess has a broken wrist and Shiro is on the tail end of a panic attack, and they both have some electrical burns, but are otherwise stable.”

The royal advisor nodded, then seemed to realize that the transmission wasn’t visual and cleared his throat. “Right: I’ll send the gurneys over to the Red Lion’s hangar,” he confirmed, brushing his hands on his soiled scrubs before tapping a command into the console he’d summoned. “What’s your ETA?”

“About five doboshes,” came Lance’s voice, slightly muffled by distance as he presumably shuffled about the cabin. “We’ll meet you in the med bay. And don’t let Keith leave without checking his shoulder: I think he tweaked it—“

“It’s nothing,” Keith interrupted, though without the usual edge of annoyance reserved for an overly concerned teammate. He seemed to marinate on a thought for a moment, the pregnant punctuated only by the persistent hum of the healing pod. 

“How’s Hunk?” Keith finally asked, his voice wavering with emotion. 

“It’s touch and go for now, but he has a good chance of making it,” Coran replied, finding that he had to force himself to be a bit more chipper than usual. He thought it best to spare them all for now regarding the rest of Hunk’s prognosis: neither he nor anyone else on the team was quite ready to come to terms with that yet. 

Even so, Keith mumbled a polite farewell and terminated the transmission, reminding Pidge to stay strong before he cut out. Coran gave a half-hearted smile as he resumed his work with the green paladin’s shoulder, numbing the area back up with an aerosolized spray before beginning the next suture. She didn’t flinch as he worked, even as her fist clenched with the dull, throbbing pain he knew the disinfecting agent he’d used had caused, her eyes never straying from Hunk’s vitals monitor. 

“There! Good as new!” Coran announced, snipping away the rest of the thread with practiced ease before giving Pidge’s uninjured shoulder a reassuring pat, but even then she hardly moved, making no indication that she was about to leave. 

“Number Five?” the advisor offered softly, wheeling around to face her more fully while also allowing her the space to breathe. Pidge finally seemed to register his presence, the bobbing of her throat an indication that she was about to break her silence. 

“He’s going to lose the leg, isn’t he?”

Ah, so Pidge had been working on her Altean: the healing pod monitors had never been too subtle with their prognoses, and he suspected that the phrase “critical break” hadn’t done much to convince her that an amputation wasn’t’ imminent. But it was true: the superheated bullet had blown through Hunk’s femoral artery and shattered his femur, and the tourniquet—while it had saved his life—had blocked off blood flow to the limb a bit longer than was strictly within the time range of relative safety.

“At this point it could go either way with equal probability,” Coran murmured truthfully, propping himself up to sit on the opposite counter. “But I am almost absolutely certain that Hunk would not have made it back to the castle alive had it not been for your quick thinking. You saved his life, and your teamwork—“

“Hunk’s life wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place had it not been for me,” she interjected coldly, burying her face in her knees. “It was _my_ birthday that we were celebrating when we went to ORYON; _m-my_ girlfriend that he went back for, even after I’d yelled at him and told him to screw off f-for being too paranoid—“

Coran flinched as her voice cracked, and all at once her dam had broken and the sobs were coming two, three, four at a time, heaving and gulping and shaking her tiny body like a leaf as her skin-tight undersuit soaked up the tears. The advisor sighed: Pidge’s feelings of guilt were understandable, and while he himself could do little to convince her otherwise at the moment, he still endeavored to fetch a blanket from one of the nearby drawers and drape it around her shoulders, waiting patiently for her sobs to subside.

When she looked up at him a few doboshes later, her eyes red and puffy from the tears, Pidge wordlessly leaned into his embrace, pressing her forehead into his chest as her breathing slowly evened out. Coran was warm, and his arms provided a comforting pressure and presence against her, but he was still a far cry from the contentment of being wrapped up in Hunk’s massive, muscular arms. She already missed him so much that she _ached_ , and a part of her felt decidedly guilty at feeling that way when a girl she’d confessed her attraction to—a girl she’d kissed, and had kissed her back—lay unconscious and recovering on a gurney only a few meters away.

A girl she wasn’t sure she knew as well as she thought she had.

Pidge supposed that it was because she had known— _really_ known—Hunk for much longer than she had Magaea: they’d worked together for years now, learning each others’ ins and outs, fighting for their very lives side by side, having each others’ backs…

Hunk had had her back, and in return she’d turned her own on him. 

“Pidge.”

She hummed in response against Coran’s chest, drawing the blanket tightly around her shoulders. Sighing, the royal advisor gripped her shoulders, giving her a final squeeze before he stepped away, his eyes earnest and calm. He’d long since learned that eye contact wasn’t particularly comfortable for her, so he focused on her ear instead, clearing his throat as the soft whirr of the castle’s notification system informed him that the paladins had just arrived in the docking bay. 

“My Pop-Pop Wimbledon used to tell me that the past gave us two things: knowledge and regret,” he muttered, only realizing how nihilistic he sounded when the words passed his lips. Pidge looked at him quizzically, tilting her head. 

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked, giving Coran a wry smile for his trouble. He laughed lightly, shaking hid head. 

“I wasn’t done,” he continued, feigning exasperation as he offered her a smirk in return. “I’ve learned that there is little that any one person can do to make someone else feel better when they are faced with an obstacle like this, but if I might impart some wisdom upon you, in its entirety?”

She nodded, prompting him to continue.

“Whether you glean knowledge or regret from the past depends on how you perceive the past. What is that phrase that humans use: ‘hindsight is two thousand and twenty?’ Yes, yes, something like that…in any case, it’s easy to look at the past from our current place and time and realize our previous mistakes and shortcomings. It’s always so much clearer looking back: what we could have done, what could have gone better, how things could have been easier, what other forces were at play…”

“Forces?” Pidge asked, unsure of Coran’s meaning.

“Yes, the greatest mysteries of them all: the unexpected factors that interfere with our plans. The standard degrees of error—matters of seniority, of duty, of the heart…”

He looked at her significantly before his eyes flitted over to where Magaea and Hunk were recovering, and Pidge felt her cheeks go warm. 

“…and these forces lead us down paths that we don’t want or expect, but we account for them where we can and take them in stride when we must.”

Coran’s voice softened, cracking slightly as he fixed his gaze upon the sleep chambers. 

“We understand that plans change: that there might not be a tomorrow, or that there could be ten thousand decaphoebs’ worth of tomorrows.”

Pidge felt more than heard the deep sigh in his chest: suddenly Coran seemed twenty years older, looking as taxed and tired as he probably was as his eyes momentarily glazed over. 

“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer.” 

His moustache twitched. “Hmm? Yes, I suppose.”

“Do you have regrets?”

Coran chortled, his expression just north of melancholy as Pidge gaped in surprise: she certainly hadn’t expected an answer like that out from such a heavy question. 

“Oh, more than time can tell!” he laughed, smoothing his hair back. “I dare say that there isn’t a single sentient entity in the universe that doesn’t! I regret many things: not asking Pop-Pop Wimbledon for more advice when I was younger, going through that phase where I smoked pekjoii root twice a quintant, marrying my first husband—“

“You were _married_?!”

“Yes, I just said that: well, it was more like we had a little too much nunvill and eloped while vacationing on Belteguese, which was a bit of an issue because I was dating his twin brother at the time and got them mixed up—“

Pidge snorted, chuckling as Coran’s face went through an impressive range of emotions. 

“I would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d just told Alfor how I felt from the get-go,” he sighed wistfully, shaking his head. 

If Pidge had been drinking anything at that moment, it would have come shooting out of her nose. 

“ _You dated King Alfor?!”_ she shrieked, covering her mouth as if she’d just unleashed a terrible secret. 

“Oh, no, not officially: the Courts would have thrown an absolute _fit_ , given our differences in station,” he replied casually, as if he were reciting the rules of a board game. “And though we never married we were together for many decaphoebs after Allita passed away, and I helped to raise Allura in her stead.”

Pidge felt a little bit of her heart melt at that: suddenly it made much more sense why Coran was such an anxious mother hen when it came to his charge. But still: it couldn’t have been easy to see the person you loved marrying and having a child with someone else.

“Do you regret not telling King Alfor sooner?” she inquired, tilting her head curiously, “About how you felt, I mean.”

Coran stroked his moustache. “Had you asked me that the quintant of Alfor’s wedding, I would have said yes,” he began, shaking his head, “But even then I wasn’t entirely sure of my feelings: he was my first love, I know that now, but it took a few blunders and failed relationships on my part to figure that out. If you ask me now, though—knowing what I know now, having had an unexpectedly wonderful friendship with Allita, and having the honor and privilege of raising Allura—in terms of what I had control over, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Really?”

He smiled so wide that his eyes crinkled in the corners, damming them as best he could as he could feel the familiar film of impending tears. 

“Really.”

\- - - - - - -

“Describe the Blackout Room.”

Kolivan eyed Pidge with thinly veiled impatience while the Blade at his right clicked the recording device, sliding it slowly across the table until it was just a few inches from her fingers. A miniature hologram of herself glared back at her, tapping its fingers against an invisible table in sync with her own as she eyed the instrument. She vaguely thought that if Hunk had been here, he’d already be halfway through taking the thing apart to see how it worked, and her heart twinged at his absence. 

“It was dark,” she answered tritely, chuckling to herself. “Some people had glow sticks, and there were some scenes of various astral bodies being projected on the wall. I think I recognized the Crab Nebula?”

“When did you begin to feel ill?”

“About a varga and a half after we arrived.” Why was this relevant? She’d already figured out why she’d gotten sick and included it in her report. “But my findings indicated that—“

“How did come about meeting the agent?”

Pidge squinted, mildly annoyed at being interrupted, but her curiosity got the better of her. 

“What agent?”

“The Unilu woman you refer to as Magaea,” he responded, as if it were obvious.

She scowled, sending Kolivan a withering glare. 

“As far as I’ve been informed, Magaea’s involvement with this incident has not been confirmed.”

“It has not been denied,” he responded evenly. “How did you come about meeting the _alleged_ agent?”

Pidge walked through her recollection of the night’s events for the next varga, becoming progressively frustrated with the Blade leader and his almost exasperated detachment from a truly harrowing couple of vargas that had nearly resulted in them losing a teammate. As the last of them to be interviewed, Pidge had the distinct pleasure of dealing with Kolivan after he’d spent about half a day in this dark, cramped room asking all of them about every irrelevant detail of their time inside of ORYON. She could see why Keith had been so distant while in the Blade’s service, and was even happier to have him back knowing that this is the kind of person he’d had to answer to.   

When Kolivan finally seemed satisfied (or, at least, as satisfied as the crotchety old Galra could be), he rose from his chair, his head just tall enough to graze the ceiling of the briefing room. 

“If you could escort us to the medical bay to collect those samples, Green Paladin,” he demanded rather than asked, ducking out of the threshold as Pidge followed behind, muttering ‘you’re welcome’ under her breath. In any case, she was anxious to get back to Magaea and Hunk in the med bay anyways: they’d be interviewing Mag the moment she woke up, and Pidge wanted to be there to reassure her as much as she could before Kolivan could intimidate her back into a coma. 

Allura was already there when they arrived, her injured hand wrapped in a glowing, translucent pod as Coran cleaned and re-dressed the burns on Shiro’s wrist. They stood at attention when Kolivan entered, greeting the Blade leader with a brief nod, as Pidge rushed to Magaea’s bed, wiping some of the sweat from her brow with a damp towel before giving her a peck on the cheek. Hunk looked to be regaining some color in his cheeks, and his vitals had stabilized overnight enough to temporarily remove him from the pod and place him in a healing suit for the duration of his treatment. 

“Kila will be collecting those samples,” said Kolivan curtly, eyes flitting about the med bay as his nose twitched. 

“Is everything all right?” Allura inquired, squinting as the Galra seemed to turn his head this way and that, trying (and failing) to conceal his reaction to whatever his nose was picking up, but the agent beside him—Kila, Pidge presumed—had caught the scent too, tensing under their mask as they turned to their leader. 

“You mentioned that the young woman you retrieved from ORYON was Galra?” he inquired, and Pidge could have sworn that she detected an iota of _something_ in his voice. 

Allura started, seeming to recognize the same inkling of emotion. “Yes, why—“

“Take me to her.”

He wasn’t even attempting to mask the desperation, and Pidge felt herself fisting the sheets on the floating gurney as he caught her eyes and barely restrained himself from sprinting over, pulling back the curtain with a tentative gentleness she didn’t know a man of his size could possess. 

The moment Kolivan’s eyes found Magaea’s face, he collapsed to his knees and covered his mouth, muttering something in Galra as he reached over and checked the inside of her left palm. 

Sure enough, a crescent-shaped tattoo that Pidge had never noticed before emerged from where it had been concealed in the sheets, just as an unhindered sob erupted from Kolivan’s throat. 

He clutched her hand in his own, bringing it to his forehead as he wept, completely oblivious to Pidge’s presence on the other side of the gurney. Surely she had to be dreaming: Kolivan was equal parts kamikaze and Spartan in nearly every respect. He never smiled, never laughed, never seemed anything other than mildly annoyed or displeased, yet here he was, luminescent yellow eyes brimming with tears, clutching Magaea’s hand as if she’d suddenly disappear if he let go. 

“Amadea,” he whispered, and the two Blades that had escorted him to the med bay promptly disengaged their masks, allowing their hoods to fall back as they rushed to Kolivan’s side. They looked at one another in disbelief, just as surprised as Pidge was at their leader’s behavior, and motioned for the green paladin to join them on the other side of the room.

“What’s going on?” Pidge stage-whispered, and the Galra with indigo skin and green eyes (Kila, Pidge recalled) glanced at her partner in confirmation before turning to the human. 

“You found her,” Kila said, as if she didn’t believe her own words. “You found Master Kolivan’s daughter.”

\- - - - - - -


	32. Year 3 (part 12)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uuuuuuuuuuuuh *sweats* warnings for some borderline M-rated klance stuff .______.

** Year 3 (part 12) **

Lance let the door behind him slam with a percussive thump, already halfway through stripping off his dress shirt by the time the lights had fully reached peak luminescence in the locker room behind the training deck. It crumpled to the floor with little ceremony, accompanied by his undershirt and blood-soaked pants just seconds later, laying forgotten as the blue paladin felt along the wall for the button to activate the shower. 

It burst to life, and he sighed as the near-scalding water painted freckles of sensation along his shoulder blades, rolling down his back to saturate the boxer briefs still cinched around his hips. He swore, shucking off the drenched undergarments and kicking them into a sad, wet heap in the far corner of the washroom, padding about carefully as to avoid slipping as he fumbled around for the funky green shampoo that smelled like Pinesol and made his scalp tingle. The room had fogged up quickly with steam, so much so that he’d barely avoided tripping over the shower caddy that Coran had purchased at the swap moon last decaphoeb, instead jamming his toe into the soft plastic at its base. 

“— _madre de pu_ —“

_ Slam.  _

Lance flinched, reflexively covering his crotch with the shampoo bottle as he heard the locker room door swing open, the handle hitting the adjacent wall so hard he could have sworn he’d heard it smash some of the tile. Steam wafted out into the hallway, clearing the fog inside the shower enough so that the blue paladin could see the silhouette of the person in the threshold, feeling his entire body tense as the figure lumbered in with little regard for Lance’s state of undress.

“Jeez, Keith, you ever heard of knocking?” he snipped, patience wearing thin. He was sweaty, still smelled the faint musk of the anonymous Galra that he’d sucked face with back at the club, had just watched his best friend nearly die, and been interviewed (read: interrogated) by Kolivan and his Blades for an hour (“it is vital that you recount the incident as soon as possible thereafter to preserve the integrity of the memory”), and all he wanted to do was shower and change and go back to the med bay to check up on Hunk. 

And out of _all_ of the showers in the castle (there were _eight_ : Lance had counted), Keith had chosen to crash this one. 

Didn’t he have to interview with Kolivan, too? Lance figured he’d have the place to himself for half a varga, at the very least: either that, or the Blade of Marmora had installed a USB port in Keith’s brain and just downloaded the information straight from the source. He honestly wouldn’t put it past them. 

But in any case, Keith was here, and he had to deal with it: they’d been in this locker room together in various states of undress before, so it wasn’t weird or anything. Clothes off, dicks out, whatever: just don’t make eye contact and you’re fine—

Aaaand Keith was stripping. 

_ Aggressively _ stripping. 

Lance squeaked and turned to face the wall, his cheeks blooming with heat as Keith made various noises struggling with his shirt, growling and grunting as he scrabbled at his back. He must have worn one of those ridiculous button-up-the-back shirts, and now seemed to be wholly regretting the decision as the fabric began to pull around his shoulders.

“Lance—“

“Dude, I’m _naked_!” he retorted, spluttering as various elements from his more frequent wet dreams mashed together into this serendipitous, wholly unbelievable reality: Keith, in the locker room, making noises, _stripping_ —

“I figured, and I’m sorry for barging in, but— _please_ just help me get out of this quiznakking shirt,” Keith pleaded, sighing defeatedly as he approached Lance. “Coran is busy with Shiro and Allura, Pidge is injured, and—“

Oh. 

_ Well _ , then _._

“ _Fine_ , get over here.”

And—well, Lance was still kinda turned on, but could understand Keith’s frustration. He swallowed, turning around to beckon the red paladin over with a disgruntled grumble. Of course this had been too good to be true: there was no way in heck that Keith would have deliberately sought him out otherwise. 

_ No one ever wants to get naked with me _ , Lance thought: even the cute Galra guy at the club had bailed on him, disappearing without a trace before he could get so much as a name or phone number. It was a shame, too: he was a good kisser, and had seemed really into him. 

All of those thoughts flew out the window when Lance got about a quarter of the way down his back with the buttons: the familiar scar that had been inflicted during the Trials of Marmora was still emblazoned across Keith’s right shoulder, but a smattering of blotchy bruises curving over his back and sides _certainly_ hadn’t been there two days ago. 

“Whoa, dude!” Lance exclaimed, and Keith flinched at the sudden outburst. “Did someone use your back as a paintball target or something?”

“No,” he deadpanned, turning his head around to give Lance an exasperated glare. “Why?”

“Your skin is so bruised that it’s purple.”

The red paladin tensed, his eyes going wide as Lance looked on him with obvious concern, seeming to forget that he was still in the nude and currently in the process of rendering Keith in a similar state. 

“Did you get hit when you went back for Hunk?” he asked, continuing to work on the buttons. “Did something you ate at the club give you a weird reaction?”

“Some iteration of the latter,” Keith mumbled before he could stop himself, staring down at the blood-soaked sleeves of his shirt as pink-tinted rivulets of water ran down his fingers. He still couldn’t get the image of a terrified Pidge nearly thrusting the tip of her bayard into his stomach, startled as she was by his activated Galra features. At least Hunk had taken it well, just before his leg had been nearly shot off.

“Was it that same stuff that made Shiro and Pidge sick?” Lance pried, now about two-thirds of the way through the buttons. “You didn’t vomit or pass out, but from what Pidge said it sounded like things might have been different for you because you’re half Galr— _oh_.”

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, biting his lip as Lance’s fingers hovered over the closure of the shirt. He didn’t need to see the blue paladin’s face to know that he’d put two and two together.

Well, he’d had to have figured it out sooner or later. 

“Yeah,” Keith confirmed, tucking his bangs behind his ear. “Magaea told me that half-Galra sometimes undergo…changes.”

Lance squinted, chancing another peek at the purple splotches on Keith’s back. “Changes.”

_ God _ , this was so much more awkward that he’d envisioned his first shower sharing experience being. 

“From what I understand it’s, like, a cycle? The Galra traits come out when I’m, um…”

Excited. Territorial. Possessive. 

_ Aroused. _

“…stressed.”

A beat of silence, and Lance finished off the last of the buttons, standing there a moment as he processed.

“Wouldn’t that make you Galra, like, all the time?” he asked, utterly baffled. He could count the number of times he’d seen Keith at ease on one hand, and he’d lived and worked with the guy for more than two years now. The real answer had to be embarrassing or personal: he said it was a ‘cycle,’ so what if Galra got, like, periods or something? 

“Stress is relative. Besides, I’ve been part Galra all the time my entire life, Lance,” Keith muttered exasperatedly, sighing in relief as he shucked off his shirt and chucked it into the same corner as Lance’s soaked boxers. “It’s just that certain parts of me look more Galra on occasion, now, because of hormones or whatever.”

“So the glowy thing you can do with your eyes is because of your ‘cycle’,” Lance deadpanned, wholly unconvinced. “I thought that that was controlled by your environment? You know: less light, more glow?”

“Well, yeah, but the ears and the teeth are a different story—“

_ “The ears and teeth are what now?” _

__

Lance stared at him, mouth agape, eyeing him up and down as if he expected Keith to go full Galra right this moment, and Keith had to restrain himself from doing the same: there was no way that he was making direct eye contact with his teammate while he was naked in the shower unless it was absolutely necessary, and he’d managed to be good so far.

Mostly. 

“I should let you get on with your shower,” Keith mumbled, tucking his chin into his chest as he felt a telltale heat creep into his cheeks. “Thank you for, um, helping me with my shirt. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

He’d conceded to having a very long and very personal visit with his right hand in the facilities down the hall when Lance made a weird sort of gargling noise behind him, startling Keith enough to make him turn all the way around in one sweeping movement, and oh, right, Lance was _kinda naked_ and Keith _should not be here right now_ —

“What?” he spluttered, focusing very hard on that one tile in the corner of the room that was slightly greener than the rest: if he stared at it long enough then he wouldn’t see Lance’s long, brown legs and willowy collar bones—

“You may as well just stay and finish your shower,” Lance proposed, gesturing to the other faucets in the room. Damn the Alteans and their communal bathing habits. “If you need one half as much as I do you’d be doing the whole castle a good service by just getting it over with: you always smell like sweaty gym socks and bad cologne when you come off the training deck.”

A thousand possible rebuttals popped into his head at once: ‘Do you make a habit out of smelling me during training?’ and ‘Screw you: you’re actually supposed to sweat during a workout’ were certainly at the top of the list, but before he could cognitively decide on either one his mouth was already running, the words spilling with a startling lack of finesse. 

“Screw me.”

.

.

.

_ Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Fuck. **Fuck**.  _

Lance’s smirk practically melted off of his face, drooping into a slack-jawed incredulity. Even in the dull light of the locker room Keith could see his cheeks ignite with color, spreading all the way down his neck to dust his pretty collarbones. 

_ Fuck _ , he was a gay _disaster_ : a Freudian slip was _totally_ not the way he’d planned on dealing with his feelings for Lance. He’d planned on bottling them up and hurling them out into the cosmos, somewhere where they’d be sucked into a black hole and transported to another time, or place, or universe where his yearning and heartache were wanted; where they wouldn’t plague his dreams with the phantoms of long, spindly fingers tangled in his tresses; of soft, warm lips upon his own—

“A-are you offering?”

Keith’s head snapped up, staring into the blue, fathomless depths of Lance’s eyes before the other man lost his courage and looked away, cheeks burning with shame. Out of context he might have been kidding, but with the way he was crossing his legs and covering his mouth, as if stunned by his own boldness, Keith wasn’t so sure.

Did Lance…?

No. He couldn’t do this: not again; not twice in one day. Lance opened up to and made out with strangers in clubs: he didn’t kiss Keith; didn’t _want_ Keith unless it was out of necessity or anonymity. It would just hurt that much more after all was said and done: he’d go back to flirting with Allura, and deny that there’d ever been anything between them. 

Keith would only ever be another notch in his belt, but even so his insides _burned_ , yawning in emptiness and begging to be filled with an intensity he immediately knew was linked to his Galra heritage. The familiar headache was already beginning to manifest: soon his ears would be pointed, his teeth and nails sharp and his eyes a glowing yellow-green, and as he turned into the monster he was Lance would know _everything_ —

“Keith? Keith, are you okay?”

Lance looked so much taller all of the sudden, and Keith realized that it was because he’d fallen to his knees, clutching his scalp and hissing in pain, the blue paladin’s hands a cool balm on his own as they massaged some of the tension away. Keith trembled, a soft sob escaping his lips as his hearing sharpened and his teeth suddenly felt too big for his mouth, knowing that the lights would be far too bright when he opened his eyes. 

But before he could, Lance had let his hands trail down to Keith’s face, rubbing small circles into the apples of his cheeks with the pads of his thumbs, dragging them gently across his face until they came to rest by his ears. 

Keith’s eyes flickered like slivers of starlight as he blinked them open, his slightly darker pupils constricting in the light as they adjusted to take in the features of Lance’s face: the blue paladin was gaping like a fish, feeling the soft cartilage at the points of Keith’s ears as if determining their authenticity with one hand as he pushed back his dark, purple-tinged bangs with the other. 

“It was you,” Lance gasped, his eyes as wide as saucers as he took Keith in. “Back at ORYON—“

He squeezed his eyes shut, nodding in response: he was so ashamed, and felt so quiznakking _stupid_ —if Lance pushed him away and never talked to him again he’d deserve it, and—

Lance was cradling Keith’s face in his hands, inspecting every feature with his spindly fingers and blue, blue eyes: he was positively mesmerized; as awestruck as he’d been only a few vargas ago in the Blackout Room, basking in the afterglow of an ardent kiss. 

Keith licked his lips, allowing himself to lean in as the other man pulled him forward, flinching back just a bit as he felt Lance’s nose brush his own. 

“Lance, I—“

His lips grazed over Keith’s—a gentle, tentative peck, nothing more—but the explosion of sensation behind it was enough to make his breath hitch, and before he could stop himself he’d leaned forward and kissed Lance back, a soft whimper passing between them as one of Lance’s hands crept down his neck and settled over his chest, right above his fluttering heart. 

They broke apart, panting and sweating and scrabbling for purchase on one another’s skin, foreheads touching as their eyes met.

“Is this okay?” Lance whispered, as if his voice might rupture their sublime, tucking a strand of Keith’s hair behind his ear. 

“More than,” Keith growled, surging forward to reconnect their lips in a feverish frenzy, reveling in how Lance squeaked in surprise against his lips. 

This was their language, now: an extraordinary symphony of sounds and sensations; of touches and kisses and undulating muscles, pushing and pulling; giving and taking in perfect sync as they acclimated to this new creation of _them_.

_ I’ve never felt this way before _ , said Lance’s eyes as they bore into Keith’s, pupils blown wide as the red paladin quickly shed his pants and pitched forward, leaning the other man down until his back lay flush with the floor. 

_ I’ve admired you for so long _ , said Keith’s tongue as he laved at Lance’s collarbones, trailing nips and butterfly kisses up his neck until their lips met in a fervent clash of tongues and teeth.

_ You’re beautiful, _ said Lance’s fingers as they traced the outline of Keith’s stomach, dipping boldly into his waistband to explore the uncharted plains of his hips. 

_ I need you _ , said the nod of Keith’s head as he helped Lance tug off his boxers, guiding the blue paladin’s hand up and down the length of his thigh with his own, leaning in for a breathless kiss. 

_ I love you.  _

__

\- - - - - - -

Amadea.

Her name was Amadea. 

She was six foot four, with two arms and two legs, and skin that shone a silky blue-lavender under the harsh lights of the castle’s med bay. 

And she was Kolivan’s daughter. 

In her stupor she’d only managed to catch bits and pieces of Kila’s hushed explanation: how Amadea had been sent on a covert mission to investigate a suspected Galra Empire affiliate on what had once been the barren asteroid of ORYON-TAL-141 about 65 decaphoebs ago, only to be cut down mid-transmission and presumed dead. Shiro and Allura had pieced together the information well enough—what they knew that Pidge didn’t still eluded her as of yet—but even they couldn’t mask their surprise as Kolivan had broken down by Maga—Amadea’s stretcher and openly wept in front of several of his allies and two if his subordinate officers. 

Pidge supposed that Kolivan’s emotional outpouring was something that only a parent could fully understand, but even so Allura grew misty-eyed when she became appraised of the situation, no doubt thinking about the tearful reunion with her own father that the war had denied her. Shiro was like a rock by her side, seeming to sense the quivering of her lip and the slight shift of her eyes, squeezing her hand gently in his own as they waited patiently for Kolivan to collect himself and address them all formally. 

On any other day, Pidge would have been incredibly smug about catching both of her leaders in such a compromising position, but she didn’t have it in her today to tease them: her best friend might very well still lose his leg, and the first person she’d ever kissed—who had ever kissed _her_ —was—

“Pidge, a moment.”

Allura’s gentle, yet authoritative voice disrupted her thoughts, the princess’s warm hand on her shoulder guiding her to one of the more secluded areas of the med bay. Pidge suspected it might have functioned as a waiting room at some point in time, given the stack of faded Altean magazines and what looked like an ancient coffee machine near the front reception area. The furniture was crisp and white, and the green paladin didn’t dare go near it until Allura gestured for her to sit, not seeming to mind that Pidge was still covered in soot and blood.

Hunk’s blood. 

Allura seated herself in the opposite chair, her posture as regal as ever despite how torn and ragged her clothes had become in the past few vargas. Even now, with her hand in a cumbersome, portable healing pod, she moved with poise and grace, betraying the sincerity of the conversation that Pidge was sure was about to occur. 

She sighed, sagging her shoulders. 

“Allura, I’m not really—“

“I’ll only be a few doboshes, I promise.”

Pidge blinked, tentatively nodding her consent.

“I wanted to talk to you about the more general details with the other paladins here, so I will hold off on that conversation for now.”

The green paladin sighed in relief: she really hadn’t been looking forward to being chewed out.

“But more to the point: you and Amadea seemed…close.”

Oh. 

This was going to be uncomfortable.

“I was close to _Magaea_ ,” Pidge mumbled, sighing deeply. 

Allura flinched at Pidge’s biting, albeit resigned tone.

“The person that Shiro and I encountered—who we suspect is behind all of this—is a powerful Druid,” she began carefully, diverting the sore subject for now. “I knew him personally on Altea.”

Pidge’s eyes widened. “How? Was he also in cryostasis? Did he happen to specialize in biotechnology?” she inquired, sitting up a little straighter: this Druid must have been responsible for the gene-specific agent that had made her and Shiro sick. 

“We think that this Druid—he calls himself Rho—worked under the Galra Empire, and corrupted himself with quintessence to extend his own life span. Before the war, he was personally appointed by my father to discover a solution to Altea’s environmental crises.”

So this Rho was obviously shrewd enough to gain the attention of a king, but what did this have to do with Magaea? 

When Pidge asked as much, Allura bit her lip, looking anywhere but the green paladin’s piercing gaze. 

“I called you in here,” she began, “to discuss the possibility that Amadea was perhaps one of Rho’s…experiments.”

Well, that much was obvious: she hadn’t just spontaneously grown another pair of arms and become part Unilu overnight. 

When Pidge’s expression didn’t change the way Allura had expected it to, her eyes flicked downward. She summoned a data pad from the air, the translucent screen flickering to life as she tapped the keys. 

“As we now know, Amadea is Kolivan’s daughter, and was taken 65 decaphoebs ago while gathering intel for the Blade of Marmora,” she explained, eyes flicking across the screen. “We’ve done some preliminary scans, and determined that the changes that Rho made were far more… _thorough_ than we’d initially thought.”

The princess summoned up a digital file of a stern Galra woman that couldn’t have been older than Keith on the screen, turning it around with her fingers so that Pidge could see it un-reversed.

Pidge squinted, scrutinizing the image. The woman was a spitting image of Kolivan—facial markings, ears, scowl, and all—but looked nothing like Magaea. 

“I talked to Kila and Rada—the two Galra that were in the med bay with us—and they said that this was taken about two phoebs before Amadea disappeared,” she continued, pulling up another image of ‘Magaea’s’ face that had been taken during the diagnostic scan just a varga or two ago. “This woman was the one you encountered at the club, correct?”

Pidge nodded: now that the photos were together she could see similarities in the structures of each face: the brow ridge, the shape of her chin, the curve of her nose—but they could barely hold a torch to the differences. Even in sleep, Magaea was soft; at ease: she was beautiful in a delicate way, even as scratches and soot marred her face, like an angel cast from the heavens. Amadea was a fierce kind of beautiful, with piercing, pupil-less yellow eyes and elegant facial markings that resembled her father’s, the red streaks above her brows etching a permanent, stoic visage that commanded respect and authority. 

“We suspect that Rho was using genetic biotechnology and magic to alter Amadea’s appearance,” Allura explained carefully, gesturing to the images with a wave. Two separate karyotypes appeared, with several regions on each highlighted in specific areas. 

“Rho seems to have over-expressed what you Earthlings refer to as _hox_ genes to give her a longer torso and a second pair of arms, and altering the methylation of other genes to control her facial features. Her genome was not permanently altered, but it will take some time for her physical features to return to normal.”*

A live feed of the med bay near Amadea’s bed popped up onto the screen, and Pidge gasped: her ears had already become larger, and the markings on her face were beginning to emerge. She wouldn’t have noticed it without context, but the similarities were now clearer than ever. 

“In half a phoeb she should resume her typical form,” Allura continued, still somewhat reserved. Pidge caught on, leveling her with a calculating tilt of the head. 

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Allura flinched, eyes flicking downward. She motioned for Pidge to sit beside her, shifting her weight until they were face to face.

“Pidge, there’s no easy way to say this: the young woman you met on ORYON—this ‘Magaea’—she, well—when Amadea wakes up, not only will she not look like Magaea, but she won’t act like her, either. Because of this, I’m…I’m inclined to warn you that whatever relationship you developed with Magaea may not carry over to Amadea.”

The green paladin quirked an eyebrow. “You didn’t mention that the genetic alteration affected Amadea mentally.” Yes, she would look different, but neural networks were a complicated combination of nature and nurture: how could Rho have possibly known what combination thereof would result in his desired outcome? There were just—there were just too many variables, even for someone as powerful as a Druid. 

The princess looked pained as she clicked a few more buttons, summoning up what looked like an Altean version of two MRI scans in place of the karyotypes. 

“Rho probably used magic to specifically condition Amadea’s neural network to react in prescribed ways to a given stimulus. Based on energy signatures and scarring, it’s…quite possible that he’s altered her brain and appearance on multiple occasions to both gather intel and keep his intentions and activity hidden.”

And—

oh.




Pidge sucked in a breath—or, at the very least, she tried to—but it was as if the green lion had sat on her chest, crushing her underfoot with an ease that shamed her even more. 

All of those things that Magaea had said about how Pidge had made her feel like she could be herself; her sweet, adorable shyness; the way she’d been held and had her tears wiped away; how Magaea had looked at her in the low light of the Blackout Room when they’d _kissed_ —

It was—

It was all a _lie_. 

“Pidge, I’m so—“

“I need to go.”

\- - - - - - -

She was numb.

She was numb, and she needed to wash out the alien hairspray before it caked too heavily and became too stiff to move. She needed to remove the last of her makeup—where her mascara ran and her lipstick smudged—and scour her skin: every place Magaea had touched; every place she had caressed and kissed. She needed to scrub the blood from underneath her fingernails; to soak the dark undersuit of her paladin armor to exsanguination, tingeing the water a soft pink as it swirled down the drain— 

She needed to curl up in her bed and cry. She needed Hunk to be safe and wrapped around her, warm and tight and _away_ , holding her so close that she could count the steady rhythm of his heartbeats and feel the warm timbre of his voice against her cheek. 

_ I wouldn’t deserve it _ , she thought, sniffling. _I’m the reason he’s in that healing pod to begin with._

Pidge grit her teeth, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes until she saw spots dancing across her eyelids, feeling for the keypad to the showers and willing herself to stave off the sobs until she could muffle the sound with water and steam and tile. She stumbled into the closest stall, not even bothering to remove her undersuit before she lost herself under the scalding spray, casting off what remained of her armor as her chest began to heave and shudder. 

It _hurt_. 

Everything ached and burned, and had she not known any better Pidge might have suspected that a black hole was forming right at the base of her stomach, the undulations of manufactured emptiness bringing her to her knees. 

Like some fucked-up Schrödinger’s emotion, everything ached and burned, yet even as she sobbed Pidge was numb. She cried without quite knowing or understanding why quite yet (at least, to the degree of specificity with which she typically scrutinized), her body determined to tell her that it needed to process ‘Magaea’ before it allowed her to run through the digits of pi or, heavens _forbid_ , calculate how much metal she’d need to construct Hunk a prosthetic leg, or—

The comm link attached to her gauntlet crackled to life, and Allura’s familiar lilt echoed through the stall, albeit with less of an edge than usual. 

“Pidge—“

“What the hell do you _want_ , Allura?” she snapped, barely restraining herself from punting the damn thing into the next stall and dealing with the fallout later. She’d had maybe ten doboshes to herself since Allura had dropped that bombshell and, god _dammit_ , she deserved to have some peace. 

The princess seemed to catch on to Pidge’s tone, and to the green paladin’s utter frustration she softened her voice even further. 

“Coran set up a cot for you in the infirmary if you wanted to spend the rest of the night cycle there,” she supplied diplomatically. “Amadea has been sent to a separate ward with Kolivan and his generals, but I’m sure that Hunk would appreciate your company.”

_ He’d appreciate it a lot more if he weren’t comatose and fighting for his life _ , she wanted to retort, but held her tongue: now that she thought about it, Pidge didn’t think she’d be able to sleep at all that night, but if she could make the best of her time and support her friend then so be it. 

“I’ll be up in half a varga,” she replied, nudging the comm with her foot to end the transmission.

\- - - - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohmygosh, 100 comments! Thank you all so much!
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> * So I’m putting my biology major to use and including stuff based on _real science_ because I can! 
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> A karyotype is basically a diagram of all of a person’s chromosomes (coiled rods of DNA that look like two hot dogs stuck together at the tail ends). Among other things, these are sometimes used to identify major genetic abnormalities like Down’s Syndrome (where there’s 3 copies of the 21st chromosome instead of 2). They’re called chromosomes because the dyes and markers that are used to identify them make them look colorful (chromosome pair 1 is yellow, chromosome pair 2 is red, etc. _chrom_ = color ). 
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> For the uninitiated, _hox_ (or homeobox) genes are regions of genes responsible for the development of the body’s segments along the head-tail axis: one set controls the growth of the head, the other of the upper limbs, etc. You can actually mess around with _hox_ genes in certain organisms (like flies) to give them two sets of wings instead of one. That’s actually how evolutionary biologists suspect that dragonflies and beetles came to exist: a spontaneous _hox_ gene mutation in ancient flies! For dragonflies the second set of wings stayed wings, and for beetles the second set of wings became wing casings. Of course, this usually happens at the embryonic stages of development, but I’m sure Rho used his magic to facilitate things. 
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> DNA methylation is basically the process of attaching a methyl (CH3) group to the ‘skeleton’ of a nucleotide (the ‘building blocks’ of DNA) to change the gene’s expression. It’s like a ‘switch’ that turns certain genes on or off without actually altering the DNA sequence. 


End file.
